


Special Treatment

by Arkiem



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Age Play, Consensual Infantilism - Eventually, Cuddles, Daddy!Hulk, Diapers, Dub Con Age Play, Gen, Hugs, Infantilism, Little!Tony, Non-Consensual Spanking, Pacifiers, Spanking, Tony likes it even if he denies it, Wetting, bottles, dub con infantilism, non-sexual infantilism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-07-14 18:19:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 32,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7184960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arkiem/pseuds/Arkiem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony seems to be the only one who can stand next to the Hulk without being smashed. He's proud of that, but he'll start to wonder whether this is a good or bad thing when the Hulk begins to scoop him up after every battle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I had this idea since I watched The Avengers, but I just couldn't put my mind into it. Not long ago I read "Hulk's little boy" story, by Floris_olen (I guess) and I got kind of inspired. So, here you have it.
> 
> English is not my first language, so I apologise in advance for any grammar or spelling mistake you may bump into (can you say bump into in this context XD?)

Tony knows he shouldn't be smirking, but he can't help it. To be honest, he doesn’t want to help it. The Hulk just punched Steve, sending him flying to the next wall, leaving a Steve-shaped hole in it and a disoriented captain on the floor. Tony knows Steve isn't hurt, not really – nothing that the serum wouldn’t take care of in the following minutes. Perhaps that’s why he doesn’t even try to hide the broad grin showing on his face. 

You might wonder why the Hulk hit Steve, and the answer would be very simple: because Tony asked him to. Kind of. 

Steve was being all bitchy about the fact Tony had ignored his orders during the battle and had done what he thought was more convenient. Everybody knows by now that what Tony believe it is convenient is always something very dangerous and reckless. Also, everybody knows that Steve always disagrees with Tony’s ideas even if they end up working. And yes, Tony might have come too close to dying, but he didn't, and they won, so he couldn't understand what Steve’s problem was. 

When Steve approached him and started to scold him like a child, Tony rolled his eyes. When Steve continued his lecture for more than ten minutes, gripping him by the arm to prevent him from leaving just after he tried to, Tony came up with the great idea of pretending being attacked by The Captain himself, so the Hulk would come and get rid of him. And he did. 

Yes, apparently, the Hulk looks after Tony, and in turn, Tony is the only one who can talk some sense into the Hulk – and make him do things that he shouldn’t, like hitting The Captain America, but that’s a topic for another day. 

Tony isn’t sure how everything started. From one day to another, he realized he could move closer to the Hulk without being hurt in no way, the Hulk would just stare at him with a certain curiosity in his eyes and would eventually sit down next to Tony, waiting for the SHIELD agents to arrive and give them instructions of what to do after the battle – in these cases Tony wouldn’t leave as soon as the battle was over, feeling kind of responsible for the Hulk. Every time Tony was dealing with enemies who were overpowering him, the Hulk would appear out of nowhere and smash them, and wouldn’t leave until he made sure Tony was OK, already back in battle. And what to say about the times Tony was blasted off into the sky, Hulk would always catch him before he hit the ground – Tony didn’t enjoy this too much really, he thought he look like a damsel in distress in Hulk’s arms. 

Nobody could understand why this is possible. Perhaps it is because of the relationship Tony has with Bruce. The team does care for him, but only Tony treats him like any other person. Only Tony isn’t on the defensive all the time, afraid Bruce might Hulk out – quite the opposite, actually – only Tony makes Bruce feel like he has finally found a place he can call home and people who he can be considered family. So, if Bruce has a real friendship with Tony, that may influence the way Hulk interacts with him. 

But Tony doesn’t really care why. He just feels a kind of pride for being the only one who has this kind of relationship with the Hulk, who gets this special treatment. He actually likes to brag about it. A lot. And now that he just found out he can even get the Hulk to deal with anyone – whoever it is, not just enemies – he would brag about it even more. Now nobody would mess with him, otherwise he wouldn’t think twice about using his Hulk – he would never do anything to harm his teammates, though. But they don’t need to know this.

“That wasn’t funny Tony,” Steve says as he managed to sit down, both hands holding his head. 

“I’m afraid I have to disagree, Cap.” Tony keeps grinning. 

“How on earth you can get the Hulk to do those things? Are you running an experiment on him or what?” Steve asks, putting some pressure on his temples, his head was throbbing due to the hit. 

“I’d say it’s because I know how to reach deep inside people, but you and I both know it’s because of my perky nipples,” Tony boasts, earning a glare from his team leader. “I’m sure everything’s taken care of now, so, if you excuse me, I’m taking off,” he announces as he turns around after bowing to Steve jeeringly.

Forgetting for some minutes his increasing headache, Steve stands up and walks fast toward Tony, determined to finish the talk the Hulk had interrupted. This has to stop, Tony can’t get away with his behavior anymore, he has to understand that he isn’t going to be lucky all the time and that his actions would eventually have bad consequences and would get him into trouble. Steve’s strategies might seem a bit senseless and useless for Tony, but not for nothing Steve is the team leader, he knows what he’s doing, he knows how to handle a battle in a way they can win without incurring casualties during it. 

Steve is just some inches away from grabbing Tony by the arm, when the Hulk growls at him and scoops Tony up, getting him away from Steve, who backs away immediately – he doesn’t want to be punched again, once was enough.

“Sorry Cap, but as you can see my friend here disagrees too,” Tony says as he beams again, wondering if his grin could be broader than his face. 

“We’ll talk later,” Steve promises, sighing deeply. He turns around and walks away, it is more than obvious that he isn’t going to be able to lecture Tony right now. But it is a fact too that the Hulk would change back into Bruce sooner or later. 

“You can put me down now, big guy, the Cap’s gone,” Tony asks when he sees Steve leaving. “Hey, buddy, I’m OK, really. Put me down,” he requires again, after seeing the Hulk didn’t even try to let him go. 

But the Hulk doesn’t even seem to have listened to him. He just sits down and hugs him tightly, not as tight to actually hurt him, but as tight that Tony can’t even get an inch away from him. Tony struggles right away, he’s not afraid the Hulk might injure him – he does trust him – but he doesn’t like the mental picture floating in his mind of how they must look right now. The Hulk howls again after a while because Tony doesn’t stop squirming and starts patting him on the back, with a tenderness Tony never imagined he could have – even through the armor Tony can tell this – making him stay still. 

For a thousandth second Tony gets the idea of using his repulsor beams to get away from the Hulk, but he gets rid of the idea immediately, not wanting to damage this weird relationship he has with him. Besides, he’s not getting hurt at all and he internally knows he can actually use a hug, so he shrugs and hugs the Hulk back, leaning his head on his broad shoulder.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a very long chapter, but here you have it.
> 
> If you come up against any typo, spelling or grammar mistake, I'd really appreciate you let me know so I can learn from it :).

This is getting ridiculous, honestly. The Hulk has been scooping Tony up every single time they're done with a battle and he is getting sick of it. Tony doesn't deny that at the beginning it was comforting somehow and he even felt a bit proud of it, after all, who has ever seen the Hulk treating someone with such tenderness and care? But Tony doesn't really need a lot of hugs, he has never been the kind of person who craves for this kind of physical contact - and Tony totally disagrees with the people who says otherwise. 

No matter what Tony tries to do, the Hulk always picks him up and snuggles him in his embrace, patting him on the back and not letting him go until he changes back into Bruce. 

Countless are the things Tony has tried in order to avoid this, like taking off as soon as the battle is over, running off before the battle is over – he was definitely not fleeing, like that annoying pseudo-robot insinuated – hiding in one of the buildings, camouflaging under the debris, making the Hulk believe that he was inside the suit when he had actually taken it off before the Hulk could reach him – the expression when the Hulk pulled the helmet and found out there was no head under it had been priceless according to Tony – even hiding behind Steve, but nothing had worked! 

Even the time Tony didn't take part in a battle – it was only a flu, for God's sake! Contrary to what Steve thought, he wasn’t going to compromise the mission! - the Hulk had gone back to the Tower and had scooped him up and snuggled him on his lap until Tony had gotten so frustrated and bored that he had had no choice but to fall asleep right there, really? Really?! This sounded like the lamest joke ever!

Apparently, Bruce was totally clueless about this whole situation. He even dared to ask Tony why he was on him lately whenever he transformed back into his true self – it was going to be a bit embarrassing having to explain him what was happening, so Tony had stalled the conversation for a while. The first time Bruce interrogated him about it, Tony had been a hair’s breadth away from punching him and yelling at him, feeling so frustrated because of the whole situation – he really didn’t want to be on top of a naked Bruce, for God’s sake! – but he stopped abruptly when realization threw cold water on him: if Bruce wasn’t aware of what was going on, asking him to somehow tell the Hulk to stop it already wasn’t a viable option. 

And what did the team think about this situation? Well, in general, they thought it was funny – those freaking traitors. 

Thor said Tony should be grateful for having a teammate such as the Hulk, who would pay this much attention to him and always look after him. Natasha just rolled her eyes whenever she saw the Hulk hugging Tony and focused more on retrieving his weapons, she really didn't make a big deal out of the situation and Tony was thankful for that. Clint thought it was freaking hilarious, whenever he had the chance to give away Tony’s whereabouts he didn’t hesitate to do it – not to mention that all the freaking jokes Clint came up with were getting on Tony’s nerves. Steve would take advantage of the fact that Tony was stuck there until the Hulk would let Bruce come back, scolding Tony right there for his recklessness during the battle or looking for any kind of injury Tony could be hiding so Steve could drag him to SHIELD to get checked over as soon as the Hulk let him go – yes, Tony was literally dragged. But he couldn't help it, all the patting, petting and rubbing would always make him doze off. And Fury, well, as long as the Hulk didn't cause any chaos, he couldn't care less about the whole hugging thing. 

However, the most intriguing question here was why Tony didn't fight his way out? He obviously wasn’t a match for the Hulk, but his intention wasn’t killing him, he just needed to get away from him and he could certainly do that, his suit allowed him to do that. But frankly, Tony didn’t want to. And this wasn’t because he enjoyed the cuddles – OK, he kind of did sometimes, they weren’t that bad, but Steve would swear in front of international TV before Tony accepted this – it was because he really didn't want to get the Hulk into trouble, he didn’t want to jeopardize the bond he had with him, who knew when this would come in handy. 

Just once Tony got so fed up of everything – stupid Clint and his even more stupid jokes – that he shot at the Hulk and got away, but he regretted doing it. The Hulk had chased after him, demolishing several buildings that came across and injuring some citizens – fortunately, no casualties, Tony would have never forgotten himself otherwise. Fury and Steve had lectured Tony endlessly and Bruce had been benched for a week even if it hadn’t been his fault. The sadness in Bruce’s eyes caused by the thought that he could have killed innocent people for no reason at all haunted Tony for days. Besides, he had ended up in the Hulk’s arms anyway, so everything had been futile. 

"I don't know why are you complaining so much, it's just a hug," Steve had said one afternoon when Tony had been bitching about the whole situation again. 

"Then, why don't you let him hug you instead? I’m gonna lend you my suit and you’re gonna take my place," Tony snapped, frustrated because no one seemed to understand him, everyone thought this wasn’t a big deal. 

"I’d totally do it Tony, but shamefully, the Hulk doesn’t want me, maybe it’s because I don't have perky nipples," Steve snorted, leaving Tony with his mouth open. So Captain America did know how to joke and be sarcastic. 

So now, here he is, trapped in the Hulk’s arms, putting up with all the faces Clint is making at him and wishing Bruce would hurry to show up. But when the Hulk starts to bounce him on his knee, Tony has a gut feeling that that’s not going to happen any time soon. Karma must be catching up with him, because there was no other explanation why everything always backfires on him in the worst possible way, and he can never do anything about it. 

Tony is starting to think the wormhole wasn’t such a bad place to stay.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your Kudos and comments, they make me happy every time :3 
> 
> Hopefully this one has no spelling or grammar mistakes either (yes, I think I'm a little bit obsessed with that, but one of the reasons I'm writing this is to practice and improve my English). So, if you see anything badly written, I'd really appreciate you let me know.
> 
> Anyway, here's the third chapter, enjoy! :)

“Do you remember when you used to try to make Bruce to Hulk out?” Clint asks with a broad grin on his face, slouching on the sofa. “Steve would always scold you and Bruce would try to avoid you as much as possible.”

“Shut up, Barton,” Tony demanded, annoyed.

“I always thought the Tower would be completely wrecked if Bruce ever changed into the Hulk inside it, but I would’ve never imagined _this_ 'd be what was going to happened.” Clint goes on, ignoring Tony.

“Shup up!” Tony really wishes glares could kill. Well, actually, just being able to glare at him would be more than enough right now. 

“Who’d have thought that he wouldn’t even smash a glass.” Now Clint is scratching his chin thoughtfully, as if he was talking about some serious business. “He even sat down carefully so he wouldn’t knock over anything.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Tony snaps as he stamps his feet on the Hulk’s legs, making him grunt.

Clint quiets down a little, paying close attention to the Hulk’s reaction, if he does get pissed off, Clint wants to be ready to back away. “But the heart of the issue in here is: why did Bruce Hulk out?” he continues when he’s sure the Hulk didn’t get upset at all. 

“You provoked him!!” Tony accuses. 

"I did not do such a thing," Clint argues, faking an insulted expression. "How do you dare to suggest something like that?" 

“I fucking saw you Barton!” Tony barks as he starts to squirm as best he could, but the Hulk’s grip is too firm for him to be able to break free. 

"No, you didn't,” Clint assures. 

“Yes, I fucking did, you fucking asshole!” And he did indeed. 

Only a couple of hours ago, Tony and Bruce were getting themselves some coffee after being in the workshop for more than three days in a row – it was great to have someone who spoke his same language and could get obsessed with projects almost as much as Tony did. When they were about to leave, Tony saw how Clint put his head out of one of the kitchen’s vents and shot an arrow at Bruce. The latter could have easily dodged it if he hadn’t been so exhausted, so the Hulk had decided to show up to face the pseudo-threat. Catching the arrow effortlessly, the Hulk howled and looked for the party responsible of the attack right away, but when he spotted Tony, well, he did what he had been doing lately. 

“Besides, why would I do such a thing?" And the grin was back Clint’s face.

"To mess with me!" Tony states before blowing angrily, for the Hulk began to bounce him and rub his back. What the hell was the deal with all the bouncing thing? Lately, every time Tony became agitated, the Hulk started to bounce him. He wasn’t a fussy kid, for God’s sake! OK, he might be fussy right now, but it was because the Hulk didn’t let him go!

"And what would I get from messing with you? Nothing, so, chill out man. Let’s better focus on the fact that now we know we don't have to worry if Bruce transforms in here, as long as you're near he won’t feel like smashing anything." Clint says as he winks at Tony.

"YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE, I’M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU!" Tony treats, trying to get rid of the Hulk’s embrace with all his might, but the only thing he accomplishes is getting a howl out of him. 

“Tony, don’t make him mad, remember what happened the last time,” Steve warns when he hears the Hulk. “And stop with the swearing.”

“Don’t you dare to talk to me, you fucking fossil!” Tony bellows, making Steve sighs heavily. Oh yes, Tony is still mad at him, and he will surely be for some more days, because Steve hadn’t believed him when he told him about the arrow thing. He had blown him off and let Clint get away with it. Why would Tony make up something like that?!

"Would you both shut it already?" Natasha complains from the other side of the couch. She wouldn't mind the noise if Steve didn't have this thing about prohibiting them to turn the volume up. Did he really think they were going to become deaf just by watching the TV with the volume turned up full blast? That was insane, especially since they dealt with thunderous explosions on a regular basis! "I can’t listen to what those guys are saying!" 

"Do you think I give a damn about the stupid movie?" Tony asks angrily.

"You should, you were the one who wanted to watch it," Natasha objects, glaring at him.

“Can’t you see I’m not even watching the movie?!” Tony snarls, trying to turn around and glare at Natasha, but he couldn’t. The Hulk is sitting down next to the couch in front of the TV, which means Tony is with his back facing the screen. He can’t even focus on the movie to keep himself entertained while he’s stuck in there. Since when did the Hulk watch TV? “So, believe me, I don’t give a shit about whether you can’t listen to the TV or not!”

“Would everybody be quiet and enjoy the movie? Please,” Steve implores, these moments were supposed to be a chance to bond, not to get on each other’s nerves. “Natasha, just turn the volume up a bit more, Tony, just relax already, it’s not like the Hulk is breaking every bone in your…”

“Don’t you fucking tell me what to do!” Tony interrupts him. Steve sighs deeply one more time.

“Yes, Cap, don’t tell Tony what to do, that’s what he has Daddy Hulk for,” Clint mocks, attempting to grab some popcorns from Natasha’s bowl, but the latter hit him in the hand and moved the bowl away from him. 

“Go and get your own.” Natasha glares at him.

“Oh, c’mon! Give me some, you’ve got plenty!” Clint whines as he reaches for the bowl, but Natasha moves it further away. 

“Move your lazy ass and make more!” Natasha urges as Clint falls over her lap trying to get a hold of the popcorns. “What’s the purpose of the stupid movie night if nobody’s going to let me watch it!”

“Clint, quit that already!” Steve orders while he pulls him away from Natasha, the last thing he wants is the spy throwing knifes in the middle of the living room. 

Suddenly, Tony feels completely ignored. He tries to turn his head in order to see the scene behind him, but he would have to turn it one hundred and eighty degrees and that wasn’t possible. He hears a lot of noises, one of them being a hollow sound – a bowl hitting the floor, Tony is sure even if he doesn’t see it – and then he can hear some fast footsteps around the room while Steve makes use of his commander voice to say, “Put those knifes away!”.

Starting to feel all the weariness of the past days, Tony sighs heavily and leans his head on the Hulk’s chest – if he’s going to be stuck there for while more, he might as well get comfortable. Contrary to popular believe, the Hulk’s body wasn’t that hard and radiated a very soothing warmth that made impossible not to melt into it – for the record, Tony still hates the whole situation, but it did have its perks. Unable to keep them open any longer – hey, he couldn’t be blamed, he had been awake for more than three days after all – Tony closes his eyes. Even when he starts to doze off, he doesn’t fight against it, feeling too serene thanks to the Hulk’s humming to even try to do it – when the hell had he started to hum? No, wait, how was it possible that the Hulk could hum?

Just before Tony let himself be in the land of Nod, he could hear a glass breaking, but he didn’t even bother to try to find out what had happened, it wasn’t the first time – and it would definitely not be the last one either – that something was broken or destroyed in the Tower. Certainly, Tony would have someone replace later whatever that had been broken into pieces.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, any corrections about grammar and spelling is more than welcome :)

"I don't like it," Tony mumbles while he looks at the bowl of vegetable soup lying in front of him. The Hulk moves it closer to him. "You know I don't eat it because I don't like it, not because I can't reach it, right?" He quips. 

"Just eat the soup Tony, he's going to get angry if you don't," Steve asks before taking a bite of the slice of pizza he has in his hand. Homemade pizza was delightful. 

"Oh my God, I hear a voice but I don't know where it comes from," Tony says as he looks around everywhere in the kitchen, deliberately going past Steve. 

"I must say I fear you have problems with your sight, friend Tony, for Captain America was the one who talked and he lies right in front of you," Thor declares, looking a little bit confused, Tony rolls his eyes at him. Why was Thor even there? When he’s in _Midgard_ , he usually hangs out with Jane. 

"Would you stop that already? It's not funny," Steve assures, Tony has been doing that the whole week and it was starting to get on his nerves. 

"It's quite annoying, actually," Natasha adds. 

"Not as annoying as being blown off, I assure you." Yes, because Steve has ignored him again, not wanting to believe Clint had made Bruce hulk out intentionally neither the last time nor this one. 

"Because you're lyin’," Clint says with his mouth full. 

"The fuck I am!" Tony snaps while he moves as far as he can from the bowl that the Hulk insists to move closer. "I already told you I'm not eating it, big guy, so stop insisting," Tony warns, getting a howl as a response from the Hulk. 

"Tony, eat it please," Steve asks again, getting himself one more slice of pizza. 

"You shut up, you can't tell me what to do," Tony hisses, pushing the bowl away for the umpteenth time. 

"It's just vegetable soup, it's not that bad," Steve reasons. 

"Then you eat it!" Tony pushes the bowl toward him, but the Hulk pulls it back, grunting. 

Steve notices some soup was spilled due to the sudden movement of the bowl done by the Hulk, so he takes a napkin to clean it. "Stop making him mad."

"I don't understand why I have to eat fucking soup when you're all eating pizza!" Tony protests, folding his arms over his chest. “I was even the one who came up with the whole idea of having pizza!” he complains, definitely not pouting. 

"Yeah, but we don't have a Daddy Hulk who watches over what we eat," Clint mocks after taking a sip of his soda. Tony glares at him, he is starting to hate him for real. “Thanks for the idea, by the way, this is delicious.” Yes, Tony decides he’s going to kill Clint in his sleep. 

"Actually Tony, considering how badly you usually eat, it's not such a bad idea to eat something healthy for once," Steve suggests, trying to hide the smile caused by the sight of a definitely pouting Tony. 

"Shut the fuck up," Tony swears, as he’s been doing more and more lately. Steve wonders if it would be a good idea to have a swear jar. Maybe not, nobody would really pay attention to it. "I don't like it and I'm not gonna eat it. Why the fuck was there soup anyway? Who eats vegetable soup, for fuck's sake?!" He asks, looking at Steve suspiciously. "I bet you do." 

Steve doesn’t even try to deny it, he just shrugs. "There's nothing wrong with eating healthy food." 

“Stop it!” Tony yells at the Hulk when he pushes his chair closer to the table. 

Grunting noisily, the Hulk grabs the spoon roughly, filling it with soup and holding it in front of Tony’s mouth. From his expression one could tell he was starting to get angry – well, the Hulk was always angry, but when he was with Tony, there was a certain calmness that somehow overpowered him – after all, he has been trying to get Tony to eat for more than thirty minutes, unsuccessfully. The Hulk moves the spoon closer to Tony, but he just turns his face away and slouches on the chair. 

“Jesus, Tony, just open the mouth, I don’t want an angry and frustrated Hulk running throughout the city,” Steve pleads, noticing the change of mood of the Hulk. 

“I don—!” he is cut off because the Hulk took advantage of the fact that he opened his mouth and shoved the spoon. A weird grunt of contentment blurts out the Hulk’s throat, but it immediately changes into a furious one – that makes everybody in the room jump on their seats – when he sees Tony spitting the soup out. 

“Tony!!” Steve scolds, standing up and focusing on the Hulk to be ready just in case he decides to start smashing things. 

But Steve isn’t the only one who goes on the defensive. Thor already has Mjolnir in his hands, Natasha her Widow’s Bites and even Clint got his bow. When the Hulk grabs Tony by the arm and pulls him off the chair, all of them move closer, ready to attack if necessary. But they all stop dead on their tracks, totally stunned, when the Hulks swats Tony on his butt a couple of times. 

There is a long heavy silence in which nobody dares to move a muscle. Steve’s eyes lie on Tony, trying to figure out whether his pale face is due to being injured – Tony had just gotten a swat from the Hulk himself, and he wasn’t exactly known for delivering light hits – or to the shock of what just happened. Steve almost heaves a sigh of relief when Tony’s expression changes from shock to anger – Steve is not sure if he’s ready to deal with a Hulk who is willing to hurt Tony, the only person whom he seems to have a special bond with – and starts to struggle to get rid of the Hulk’s grip, but the only thing Tony achieves is ending up sitting down on his lap, kept in place by a green arm around his waist. 

“Let me go, you stupid big Slimer!” Tony orders, squirming in vain, the Hulk doesn’t even flinch, he just takes the spoon again and holds it in front of Tony’s mouth again, waiting. “I told you I don’t want to eat it!” Tony snaps, being careful the Hulk doesn’t take advantage this time of the fact he’s opening his mouth to argue.

“I wonder if Daddy Hulk would give you the full treatment it you keep refusing to eat,” Clint wonders before sitting down again, a grin showing up on his face. “Keep it up Tony, I wanna find out.”

Tony is about to talk back when, all of a sudden, he goes completely still, realizing that what Clint just said makes horrible sense. Tony can picture clearly the Hulk placing him over his knee and spanking him right there. His face goes even whiter, gulping loudly. 

Even though the horrible realization, Tony still hesitated some more minutes before making up his mind and opening his mouth to let the Hulk feed him the soup. Being forced to eat something he doesn’t like was bad, but getting his ass beaten would be much worse. Almost right away, Steve dismisses everybody, not without asking them to clear off the table before – really, what’s the deal with all the cleaning-after-ourselves habit Steve’s stubbornly trying to implement? Tony has several employees take care of the cleaning. Tony can’t be happier and more grateful for that, he really didn’t want an audience witnessing his unfortunate situation. 

In the end, the soup isn’t that bad, quite the opposite actually, maybe it needed to be heated up a little bit, but even cold it is tasty – there is no way he would ever admit it, though.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your comments and kudos, they really keep me going!
> 
> And thanks a lot to Victorian_Chik who proofread this chapter. As I told you, I really really appreciate your help :)
> 
> Enjoy!

When Bruce walked into the workshop and Tony stopped what he was doing abruptly, standing up awkwardly and leaving with no explanation whatsoever, Bruce confirmed it: it wasn’t a figment of his imagination, Tony was truly avoiding him, and he had been doing it for more than two weeks now. 

Bruce started to suspect when Tony stopped talking to him and began to look away whenever they made eye contact; if something needed to be said, he got JARVIS or any of the team members to do it. Also, every time Bruce went into a room where Tony was, Tony rushed out, not minding leaving half-finished whatever he had been doing – working on a project, fixing something broken by any of their colleagues, helping himself to some food, even taking a nap – and if for any reason Tony was compelled to stay in the same room, he was a bundle of nerves, flinching every time he felt Bruce’s eyes on him. 

In addition to that, and what made Bruce be more suspicious, was the fact that Tony even left the workshop if Bruce was there – yes, that place Tony used as a hiding place, that place where he spent days in a row working to the point of exhaustion, that place he would never leave unless being passed out, dragged or carried – justifying himself with the lamest excuses ever. And what about the last battle? Tony had run away from him, instead of his usual response of waiting to check if Bruce was all right, handing him some clothes and telling him the Hulk hadn’t caused any harm as Tony usually did – not even the hugging situation with the Hulk had made Tony stop doing that. 

However, what made Bruce be almost certain that his assumptions were real was the fact he had asked Tony why he was avoiding him and Tony had assured him that he wasn’t. 

So, Bruce knew now that Tony was avoiding him. But what he didn’t know was why this was happening, because even if it would be the most logical reason, Bruce got the feeling that the whole hugging situation wasn't to blame. 

At the beginning Bruce wasn’t really aware of what was occurring, but eventually he found out what his alter-ego did whenever he saw Tony; apart from the fact that Tony had told him about it – after having to ask him several times, of course – he’d been getting some random flashbacks and fragments of it. In those flashbacks, Bruce could see how Tony struggled and tried to escape from the Hulk, but he could also see how sometimes Tony melted into the embrace, especially when nobody was around. That was why Bruce didn’t think the cuddling issue was the reason.

Although that didn't mean Tony was happy about the whole situation, he had been very clear about that. And what did Bruce think about the Hulk snuggling his friend? Well, to be honest, he didn’t really know how he felt. Maybe a little discomfort. After all, who would like to regain consciousness being half-naked and under another person? – perhaps in a different context he'd like it, but it wasn’t the case – it was kind of awkward, regardless of how he tried to play it down. But apart from that, Bruce dared to say he was OK with it. 

But being OK couldn't be interpreted as wanting to do it. If Bruce could, he wouldn't hesitate to put a stop to it, but he couldn't. Regardless how much Bruce tried, he couldn't tell the Hulk what to do or not to do, especially if it had to do with something the big guy apparently liked and enjoyed. Perhaps if the Hulk had been terrorizing the city or doing something Bruce utterly disapproved of, he could be able to break into the Hulk's mind to refrain him, as he had done in rare occasions, but not for this. Bruce was almost sure that Tony had understood this, that he had understood it wasn’t something Bruce was causing, because Tony had stopped complaining every single minute about the hugs, and had kept his daily activities as usual. Yes, indeed, Tony being Tony would never approve the whole situation, but he wasn’t the one to would hold grudges against someone with no real reason. 

So, if Tony wasn't avoiding him because of the fixation the Hulk had with hugs, then why? It had to be something related to the Hulk, but Bruce couldn't quite put his finger on what exactly after dismissing the cuddling thing. 

Had the Hulk done something else? But what? What could the Hulk have possibly done to cause that reaction on Tony? Because, more than angry, Tony seemed to be… nervous? Apprehensive? Afraid of him? Bruce couldn’t really tell, and he did want to know what it had been so he could settle things with Tony. He was his friend, after all – Bruce wasn't going to get all cheesy to say Tony was his best friend, but Tony indeed was - and this made Bruce feel pretty bad, a lot of people already resented him and feared him; he didn't need a friend to feel like that too. 

So, Bruce needed to find out what has cause this problem, knowing beforehand that it wasn't going to be an easy task. 

Asking Tony himself wasn’t an option, he always managed to dodge the topic whenever Bruce tried to talk about it – and well, he was avoiding him, so Bruce couldn't really take to him – what happened between the Hulk and Tony, remained between them according to Tony – and the whole team, actually. But they didn’t dare to bring up the topic either, because whenever they did, Tony got pissed off, and that only meant having to get extremely cold water in the middle of a shower, to be awaken very early in the morning with the music turned up full blast, to get extremely weird flavors in their food, to deal with itching powder and so many other things nobody wanted to put up with. Nobody but Clint, of course! Because Clint kept mocking Tony no matter what. A shame Clint had been away on a mission those days; otherwise he would have spilled the beans for sure.

Even if Bruce knew what the answer was going to be, he tried asking Steve about it anyway, but Steve had said he wasn't the one who should tell him about it. Tony was his teammate and Steve respected him, so if Tony wanted to avoid the topic, Steve couldn’t talk about it behind his back.

When Bruce asked Thor, the latter babbled something that didn’t really tell Bruce what had happened, not even a slight hint, just something about the Hulk being an outstanding fellow for daring to take the matter into his own hands – this confusion had been Bruce’s fault, actually. He shouldn't have asked when Thor was taking advantage of the fact that Clint was away to master the latest Mario Kart; those two had been playing way too much lately. 

Natasha couldn't care less about the whole situation, so she didn't even excuse herself when she just rolled her eyes and left the room. And Coulson – yes, Bruce even asked Coulson – told him that piece of information was classified. What the hell was that supposed to mean?

\- - - - -

So, one more week later, here he is, sitting at the kitchen’s table, staring at his uneaten midnight snack with no idea whatsoever of what had happened. Tony entered just a few minutes ago and left as soon as he spotted Bruce, saying something about getting the feeling Dummy had set himself on fire and it was essential Tony went down to check.

"Would you stop that already?" Natasha asks by the fifth time Bruce sighs heavily, making him jump on his seat; he really didn’t notice when she arrived. "It’s getting rather annoying,” she informs him as she pours herself some water.

"Sorry, I can't help it" Bruce apologizes, rubbing the back of his neck. "Tony is still avoiding me and I don’t even have a slight idea of why." 

"You're still with that? Get over it already – he’ll get past it sooner or later," Natasha shrugs, taking a sip of water. 

"I can't. I mean, how bad was the thing the Hulk did? Tony didn’t react like that before," Bruce points out, hoping the weirdness of the situation made his teammate willing to talk. 

"You mean he’s never hidden in his workshop for more than five days just because he’s avoiding one of Steve’s lectures?” Natasha lifts an eyebrow, questioning. 

"Yeah, I know, I know.” She is right, which makes Bruce feel a little stupid; what Tony has been doing was so Tony-like. Actually, the thing that is bothering him is the fact that Tony had never behaved like this with _him_. “But I just can't shake it off. You know, I feel responsible for the Hulk’s actions, I know I shouldn’t, after all I don’t really have a say in what he does or doesn’t do, but I can’t help it. I feel I should fix whatever he breaks. And if the Hulk is doing something that's disturbing Tony, well, I feel I have to do something about it." Bruce explains, playing with the plate in front of him. 

Natasha frowns as he pulls out a chair and sits down on it, in front of Bruce. “You’re really gonna make me tell you, aren’t you?” Bruce smiles shyly, making her chug her drink, stalling for time. She finally finishes, warning, “If he takes away any of my guns as a reprisal, I’m so gonna kill you.”

“I’m not gonna let him do that, I promise,” Bruce assures, feeling a little relieve because he was one step away from straighten everything out.

“You spanked him. Well, the Hulk did," Natasha says curtly, not even flinching when Bruce almost fall over backwards as he gets a sudden cough, drowning with his own saliva. 

"HE DID _WHAT_?!”

“Keep it down! He’s gonna hear you!” Natasha reprimands before looking towards the door to see if someone walks in, drawn by the sudden shout in the middle of the night. 

“I’m sorry,” Bruce apologizes after clearing his throat. “The Hulk did what?” he asks again, only this time he almost whispers.

"What you heard.”

"Jesus, is Tony OK?" A spanking from the Hulk, how on earth didn’t Tony have a broken bone or something?

“You’ve seen him yourself, haven’t you? Does he look hurt?” Bruce shakes his head. “He’s fine. His ass must still be kind of pink, but besides that and the fact that none of us saw him sitting down at all for three days, he’s pretty much OK,” Natasha says with a small smirk on her face. 

Jesus, no wonder why Tony was avoiding him. “But why did that happen? Up until now the Hulk had just hugged him and stuff like that.”

“Well, to be honest, he kind of deserved it,” Natasha leans forward and grabs the plate with a sandwich on it that was laying in front of Bruce, “May I?”

“Sure, sure, knock yourself out,” Bruce says, all his appetite long gone. “Why do you say Tony deserved it?”

“You know how Tony is, he always refuses to follow Steve’s orders,” Natasha says, checking what ingredients the sandwich had.

“I know, but he kept doing that since the hugging thing started and the Hulk’s done nothing but hug him,” Bruce notes.

“Well, but this time he almost died, for real.” Natasha’s expression goes completely serious. “Remember the last battle? With the insufferable tiny robots?” 

Bruce nods. “Yes, SHIELD is still studying them.”

“Well, when we were fighting, Tony had JARVIS hack into their system and he found out they’ve got an auto destructive-bomb inside of them,” Natasha says, mentally deciding the sandwich looked edible enough, “and his intention was to make JARVIS set them off to get rid of all of the robots once and for all. Steve agreed with the idea, but asked Tony to lead all the robots as far as possible from the city so we didn’t have to deal with any lawsuit about destroying public property as we usually do…” Natasha trails off, biting the sandwich. “… Tony said it was going to be a pain doing that because we were very far away from any deserted area, so he proposed to magnetize all the robots to his suit and fly high enough so the explosion didn’t damage anything or hurt anyone.”

“That’s sound like something Tony would say,” Bruce comments. 

“It does… anyway, obviously Steve refused, arguing that we didn’t even know how powerful those bombs were, and damn he was right. The freaking tiny robots could’ve destroyed the whole city with those freaking bombs. The first explosions ripped Tony's suit to shreds, because he obviously turned a deaf ear on Steve’s orders and followed his plan,” Natasha explains, her expression showing a kind of annoyance she only felt when any member did something that made her wonder if they really were as smart as they claimed to be. “If the Hulk hadn’t arrived and protected him with his own body, those robots would’ve done to Tony what they did to his suit,” She finishes to tell the story, now her focus being totally on the food in her hand. 

Bruce takes some minutes before continuing, his mind busy imagining how awful the scene must have looked. “But then what? The Hulk spanked him right there?” Bruce asks, afraid the answer might be a yes.

“No, of course not,” Natasha assures, making Bruce breathe again. (He didn’t even know he had been holding his breath.) “First he made sure Tony was OK, he even let Steve take a look at him, then he didn’t let him go until we came back to the Tower. And as soon as we set foot inside, the Hulk put Tony over his knee and started to spank him.” 

“Jesus, and nobody stopped him?” 

“We did think about it, but then we realized he wasn’t really hurting him, well, he was turning Tony’s ass red, but that was pretty much it,” Natasha states, shrugging. “Then Steve asked us to leave the room. He stayed to make sure the Hulk didn’t overdo it, of course.” Natasha adds when she saw Bruce’s horrified expression. 

“The Hulk shouldn’t have done that, poor Tony.” Bruce sympathizes. 

“Hey, but it kind of helped,” she assures, “you should’ve seen how well Tony behaved the following mission, he didn’t even swear over the intercom.” 

“Even so, he’s an adult, that shouldn’t have happened,” Bruce objects, wondering how on earth he is going to make up for this.

“He does act like a brat sometimes, and…” A soft clearing of a throat interrupts Natasha. Both Bruce and she turns around and become completely paralyzed when they see Tony leaning on the wall next to the door.

“I thought Clint was going to be the one who would spill the beans,” Tony grumbles, staring at Natasha, “Or maybe Steve, but not you. So, be ready,” he treats, knowing perfectly it wasn’t necessary to say she would the target of many pranks on the following days. 

“Wait! Tony, we need to talk!” Bruce pleads as he sees Tony walking away, “I’m sorry for what happened! Wait!” He apologizes, rushing behind him.

Sighing deeply, Natasha stands up and sets the plate and glass in the sink. She wonders if it would be such a bad idea to move into SHIELD’s headquarters for some days.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, any hint about a grammar or spelling mistake is more than welcome :).

“You’re back,” Steve straightens up when he sees Natasha coming inside the room.

“I am, indeed,” Natasha assures, walking toward him.

“For good?”

“I guess so. I mean, after two weeks, he must have given up his revenge pranks, right?” Natasha asks, setting her sight on the back of the room, where Tony was sitting cross-armed in front of the Hulk and looking the other way, surrounded by… stuffed animals?

“I don’t know,” Steve shrugs, “I talked to him about it, but you know he never listens to me,” he says, unable to hide the annoyance in his voice. 

“Hmm… I guess I’ll just spend some more days at SHIELD if he keeps them up,” Natasha downplays the situation, sitting down next to Steve. She doesn’t deny Tony’s pranks got on her nerves after a week – bleach powder in her shampoo, really? She had to spent more than twenty minutes explaining Thor that particular hair dye wasn’t in fashion and Jane wouldn’t want to get one, and thirty minutes more trying to make Clint erase the picture he had taken with his cell phone, what she least wanted was having a lot of memes of her on the Internet, she already had enough. But they were just childish pranks, not anything life threatening, that’s why Natasha didn’t make a big deal about it. “Anyway, what’s up with all the plushies?” She asks, truly curious. 

“Well, apparently, the Hulk thought Tony would like them,” Steve explains, turning his head around to be able to see them, “but Tony obviously doesn’t,” he adds after shuddering a bit due to a howl from the Hulk. The latter has been holding a teddy bear in front of Tony, expecting him to take it, but Tony keeps refusing to do so, “they’ve been like that for more than an hour.”

“I meant, where did he get them from? You’re the only one who usually gets stuffed animals from the fans, but you always donate them,” Natasha inquires, chuckling a little because of the scene in front of her eyes. The Hulk has taken another plushy and shows it to Tony, but he refuses to take that one too. The Hulk keeps trying with different stuffed animals because he thinks Tony doesn’t like a particular one, he doesn't seem to realize that Tony doesn’t want _any_ of them.

“I think you know the answer to that question,” Steve implies, returning his eyes to the TV, but not really paying attention to it.

“You do know Clint is making Bruce hulk out, don’t you?” Natasha asks, staring at him.

Steve sighs deeply, rubbing the back of his neck. “I do,” he admits, a combination of irritation and shame in his voice.

Natasha raises an eyebrow, “huh.”

“Yes, I know, I know, you don’t have to tell me what you’re thinking, I just…” he trails off, trying to organize his thoughts.

“This is not going to end well, and you know it,” she warns as she takes the remote control and starts changing channels, looking for nothing in particular. “Tony will get sick of this situation sooner or later, and we can’t really blame him. And when that happens, we’ll have to deal with a very angry Hulk.”

“I know that, I already talked to Bruce about this whole thing, he’s going to try to do something about it, but he’s not sure he’ll be able to.”

“We should do something about it too,” she suggests.

“Like what? It’s not like we can tell the Hulk what to do,” Steve spats, frustrated. “And I don’t think it’s fair to bench Bruce so he doesn’t have to transform, this isn’t really his fault, besides the fact he’s a great help during battle.”

This whole situation is getting on Steve’s nerves little by little, and even if he has been turning possible ways of handling this over in his mind, he isn’t sure what he should do yet. On one hand, there’s the fact that, as Natasha mentioned, Tony’s a time bomb that could detonate at any time now. He has already stood a lot, and no one could really blame him when he decides to walk away because it’s been enough. Steve even thought Tony would put a stop to it after the Hulk spanked him, but he didn’t – maybe Tony accepted he deserved it, who knows. But when Tony bursts, the Hulk would too, and Steve can’t let that happen, he can’t cross his arms and wait until something catastrophic occurs. 

On the other hand, there is a part of Steve that doesn’t want to do anything about it. He actually thinks what the Hulk has been doing isn’t that bad. Hugging Tony? The man could really benefit from some hugs. Bouncing Tony until he fell asleep? He stayed up several days in a row and wouldn’t let himself rest at will. Feeding Tony healthy food? He already ate too much coffee and junk food to make everybody worry about his health. Spanking Tony? Well, Steve doesn’t really agree with that – he surely has never thought about putting Tony over his knee when he acts utterly recklessly, no way – but Steve does admit that that has been the only way to make Tony think twice when considering to do something careless during a battle; since being benched, lectured, locked out of his workshop, made to train rookies and so many other things Fury and Steve have tried, haven’t work at all. 

“Well, first, you should get Clint to stop making Bruce hulk out,” Natasha recommends, interrupting Steve’s train of thought, “I know we can’t do anything when Bruce transforms because of a battle, but if he keeps changing into the Hulk for not real reason, Tony’s gonna be fed up very soon,” she reasons, “I mean, why is the Hulk here now? We weren’t fighting or anything.”

Sighing heavily, Steve agrees, “I guess you’ve got a point there.” He knows Natasha is making sense, but he can’t get rid of that voice that’s whispering him again that this isn’t so bad. Clint was up to his old tricks one more time, but Tony had been locked in his workshop for more than four days, probably deprived of food and sleep as usual. Steve fails to see how the Hulk trying to play with Tony and about to make him sleep is a bad thing. “I’m gonna talk to him,” Steve promises.

"Well, I'll go and check if there's something funny in my room," Natasha announces, standing up, apparently satisfied with her team leader’s answer. 

"We just ate, there's still food in the fridge if you're hungry," Steve says, and Natasha can’t help smiling fondly, for Steve is always going all mother hen on all of them.

"No, thanks, I had something to eat before coming here, I still can't get rid of the flavor of those donuts filled with mayonnaise," she makes a face, causing Steve to smile sympathetically. 

Once Natasha was gone, Steve focus his eyes on the TV once more, not really interested on it. He would prefer to be training or doing something more productive, but the least he can do, until he makes up his mind about whether to intervene or not, is check on Tony every time the Hulk is around, just in case something turns out wrong, and the Hulk loses control.

A groan startled him a little, even though he is sure it hasn't been an angry grunt, but a contentment one. As Steve turns his head to find out what's happening, his face lights up faintly. Tony has finally humored the Hulk and has grabbed a blue stuffed dinosaur, pretending to have a fight with the stuffed elephant the Hulk has in his hands. Tony is trying to look annoyed and pissed, but Steve is sure Tony couldn’t have faked the giggle that came out of his mouth when the Hulk attacked his ticklish ribs with the elephant. 

After some more minutes of watching the scene, Steve turns back again, putting his feet on the coffee table placed in front of him, the tension on his shoulders vanishing. 

Steve is still failing to see how this whole situation is something bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I needed to take this chapter out of my head. I know some of you have asked me if there's gonna be any "real" spanking, and I assure there will, very soon.
> 
> Actually, I'm working on that chapter right now. 
> 
> Thanks for your comments! They really cheer me up :)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank to Victorian_Chik for proofreading this chapter. I really appreciate the help! 
> 
> I guess this is the longest chapter I've written so far - I do try to keep the chapters short, otherwise it'd take me more time to update. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> I know you didn't ask, but, I'm gonna say it anyway. Today is my birthday, yeii! I'm one year older! - read this with a sarcastic intonation XD - and I don't know, I just feel kind of happy celebrating my birthday by updating this story :p.

“JARVIS, is he still following me?” Tony asks as he dodges a building. 

“He’s right behind you, sir,” The A.I. informs, and Tony can swear he hears a hint of pity in JARVIS’s voice even if that’s not really possible. 

“Damn it! How can someone that heavy can be so fast?” 

“I’m afraid you’re the one who’s going slowly. Most of the power has been used in your flying, sir,” JARVIS states, and Tony surely doesn’t like to hear that information.

“Shit! Why the hell would you send me a suit that is not full charged?!” Tony spits, but he can’t really blame the A.I. After all, these suits still were a prototype. 

Tony has done it again. He has done something he had been told not to do. Something he knew was going to get him in trouble. He had been impulsive as he has been all his life, and most of the time it worked for him. Most of the time he turned out victorious even if he had been about to lose and die. So, why would he have to worry about it now? Well, because now he has a very angry Hulk chasing after him.

Of course, Tony knows he should mind about all the destruction his big green mate is leaving behind as he tries to catch up with him, but in this moment Tony just cares about saving his ass, _literally_. And well, it is not like he is running on the street were the Hulk could bump into and kill a pedestrian; he is deliberately flying high in order to make the Hulk jump from roof to roof. Some of them are getting very damage or destroy due to the Hulk’s weight, but Tony will pay for the repairs later, he will even have the building rebuilt gladly if it traps the Hulk, or at least makes him stumble and lose sight of him. 

Fury will bench him for sure, Steve will lecture him for more than a week – in fact, he must be yelling at him right now over the intercom, demanding him to stop, but Tony has turned it off so he can’t listen to him – and Bruce will be mad at him when he finds out what’s happening, but Tony doesn’t give a rat’s ass about any of those things. He just wants out. 

“JARVIS, is Veronica ready?” Tony asks when he hears the Hulk growl very close to him, desperation in his voice. 

“It’s not, sir. There are some things that need to be checked and adjusted before you use it, and if I may say sir -”

“No, you may say nothing,” Tony interrupts, already knowing what the A.I. is going to say. 

“I wouldn’t advise to make use of Veronica for this, sir,” JARVIS goes on anyway. Why the hell don’t any of his inventions listen to him? “The purpose of Veronica is subduing the Hulk when he becomes a threat to people, and this is not the case, sir,” the A.I. finishes saying, and Tony can’t shake the idea that he could perceive a scolding tone in JARVIS’s voice. 

“He’s a threat to me!” Tony winces as he hears how whinny this comment sounds. 

“Well, sir, if you had listened to Captain Rogers, this wouldn’t be happening,” JARVIS declares. Freaking JARVIS and freaking inventions, why does he even bother to create them if they’re going to be completely useless in this situations? He will definitely donate all of them by the end of the day!

“You traitor, since when you’re on Steve’s side?” 

“I’m always on your side, sir,” JARVIS assures.

“The hell you are!” Tony exclaims, his mind working hard to come up with a plan to get out of this. 

“That’s…” 

“Just shut up!” Tony cuts him off. “Do something more productive and tell me where the nearest abandon factory or somewhere like that is,” he orders, looking with horror at how the system starts to warn him about the low battery. 

Going to a deserted place where the Hulk isn’t able to hurt anybody, getting rid of the suit and set it into automatic mode in order to capture the Hulk’s attention and giving Tony the chance to go the other way and escape. By the time the Hulk finds out the suit is empty, Tony will be long gone, starting a new life in Norway. It’s a perfect plan, simple and easy to carry through. 

Anyone would think that Tony would have realized by now that those kinds of plans never work. Or he might know that, but his cleverness seems to fail tremendously when being under a lot of stress, tension, and despair. 

“There’s a building that has been derelict for some years now not so far from where you currently are, sir,” JARVIS informs, sending Tony the coordinates. 

With no hesitation, Tony makes a turn and continues flying as fast as the suit allows him, following the path JARVIS has set for him. He’s still trying to keep himself pretty high up so the Hulk doesn’t need to descend to the street; he doesn’t really need to add anything else to the list of things he’s going to be lectured for – although it won’t matter, because Tony’s going to be working in a garage in Norway by the time Fury or Steve try to find him. 

When he arrives to the building, Tony lands in a very ungraceful way and rushes inside. As he closes the door, he can listen a thunderous noise that lets him know the Hulk has set his feet on the ground too, followed by the sound of some hasty steps. Tony doesn’t have time to spare, he pulls the hidden catch at his wrist to rid himself of his armor, and he remotely orders it to assemble again as he runs away from there, looking for the closest exit. As he spots one, he hears the howl of the Hulk when he knocks down the front door. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Tony can see how the Hulk approaches his armor and grips it by the arms, lifting it, before Tony can send it the order to move to keep the Hulk distracted for more time. By the way the Hulk roars, Tony is sure his green friend found out there was nobody inside the suit due to the weight, and he’s surely looking for the bearer now. But Tony doesn’t care, because he has found a door, and he’s just a couple a meters away, which means that in less than two minutes he’s going to be out of there, JARVIS is going to send him another armor, and he’s going to be flying to his new home pretty soon. 

Or Tony would have done so if the freaking door had opened. 

Really, why does nothing work out for him? Tony thinks he’s not such a bad person; he deserves a bit of luck once in a while! Karma can’t be a bitch to him for the rest of his life! 

Tony pulls the door, but this one is locked. He kicks it, punches it, takes a stick that was lying next to him to hit the door with it, but it ends up breaking. Right away, he looks around for another exit near there and sees a window that could be broken more easily than the door, but before he can even take a step, the Hulk stands up in front of him. 

The fuming expression on the Hulk’s face makes Tony suffer a drop in his blood pressure; it is true that the Hulk is always mad, but Tony can tell this is a new level of anger. The Hulk roars at him again, and Tony is truly afraid when he takes him by the waist not in a careful way and lifts him. Is the Hulk finally going to hurt him? Is Tony no longer immune to his smashing? Is he going to be crushed now that he has gotten rid of his armor some minutes ago? – brilliant idea, by the way. What had he been thinking about? How on earth did he think that stripping of his armor when an angry Hulk was chasing after him was a good idea? Stupid brain that was supposed to be clever, he was going to donate it too! 

Another growl makes Tony flinch, and he’s sure as hell the Hulk is about to smash him right there, when the latter does something Tony wasn’t expecting him to do at all considering how livid he looked: he hugs him. The Hulk hugs Tony in a way far too different from all the hugs he has been giving him lately. He hugs him too tightly for Tony’s like, but no harm is being inflicted, not really. It’s a kind of desperate hug, like if the Hulk is trying to never let him get away from him, rubbing his big hands all over his back and legs, his fingers tightening on his sweaty t-shirt. Tony is too stunned to do anything but stay still, because even if people were hugging him more frequently lately – did he really look like he needed a hug? – he is hardly ever hugged like this. 

After some minutes, Tony manages to relax a bit and throws his arms around the Hulk’s neck, letting himself melt into the embrace. Had it been really bad? Had it been even worse than the time those fucking tiny robots completely torn his suit apart? Had he really scared the Hulk? Because Tony can swear he saw an expression of fear on the Hulk’s face after he had saved his ass. 

“I’m fine big guy, no need to worry,” Tony assures when the Hulk breaks the embrace and pulls him away, examining him, looking for an injury or something, “I’m pretty sure I’ll have several bruises by tomorrow, but I’ve gotten worse, you know.” 

The Hulk grunts, his comment doesn’t stop him from turning Tony around to check the back of his body too. 

The Hulk hugs Tony again after confirming that he really didn’t have any major injury, and Tony can’t prevent himself from groaning in contentment, nor he can’t help squeaking when the Hulk suddenly sits down and pulls him away once more, placing him face down over his knee. 

If Tony had thought he had gotten out of the spanking because of all the hugging thing, he could have not been more wrong. 

“NO! NO! LET ME GO! I SWEAR I WON’T DO IT AGAIN!” Tony panics, yelling as loud as he can to see if that makes the Hulk lose his grip, but it doesn’t, the Hulk has him well pinned with just one hand. 

Tony yelps when he feels the first swat deliver to his rear, the Hulk’s hand being big enough to cover it all at once, even the sit spots. Oh, he’s so not going to be able to sit down comfortably for some days. 

“You’re hurting me!” Tony declares after the fourth smack, and he’s more than sure he would have clearly heard the Hulk chuckling if it wasn’t for the noise the swats were causing, re-echoing loudly because of the desolation of the building. 

Tony knows the Hulk isn’t spanking him with all his strength, his bones would be broken all at once just with one blow it he did so, but even like that, the smacks sure hurt as hell. He keeps yelling, squirming, kicking his legs into the air, but nothing stops the Hulk from delivering the smacks on his butt. 

He hates this, he loathes all the fucking situation. He despises the fact that he let this whole thing go so far. He detests not having been able to put a stop to this when he should have to. He hates how he ignored all the hints that told him he would eventually ended up like this. He loathes the fact that he allowed himself to find the hugs soothing and warming, making him turn a blind eye to everything else. He hates not putting a stop to this after the first time he found himself in this matter. 

But what Tony hates the most is that, very deep inside of him, he feels he deserves this. 

The last and first time Tony found himself in this position, he had been so angry that the Hulk hadn’t gotten the expected result from a spanking. But this time, by the tenth swat, Tony realizes with dismay that tears are welling up in his eyes and he can’t avoid moaning every time the Hulk’s hand makes contact with his butt. Stubbornly, Tony promises himself he’s going to get through this in the most possible dignified way, he has suffered dozens of worse injuries throughout his life, a punishment that was supposed to be for children wouldn’t tear him apart, no way. 

Without really picking up on when or how, images of the last hours start floating in Tony’s mind: Steve asking him to step aside after finding out that Magneto had arrive to the battlefield; Tony miraculously listening to him, letting his team mates to deal with the enemy, perfectly aware of how vulnerable he was in the presence of a mutant who can control metal at will; damn Edward Scissorhands – Logan – standing up next to him and mocking him for being a coward for not daring to face Magneto; his ego being insulted and judgment being clouded because of that, making him believe he had to get into battle again and show everybody that Iron Man never chickened out. 

What was the worst thing that could happen? That Magneto stripped him of this armor and Thor or someone else had to get him out of the way like the last time they fought against the exasperating mutant? If that happened again, Tony was more than ready to handle the situation, he would get JARVIS to send him another suit and he would keep fighting, but Magneto had something else in mind: shrinking his suit, with Tony inside. A cried of pain left Tony’s mouth as he felt the pressure in all his limbs. He didn’t deny he panicked when he realized all the sensors broke and failed to carry out his order of disassembling the armor to free him – he was going to get killed with the thing he had invented to protect himself, oh the irony! – and he did know he had been just a few seconds away from having all his body crushed if it wasn’t for the Hulk, who arrived just in time to send Magneto several feet away with a punch and free Tony from his useless armor.

The Hulk had saved his life, again. And what had Tony done? Ask JARVIS to send him another suit and fly away as fast as possible from him, not allowing the chance to check up on him, even if he knew the Hulk would be more than worry. And why? Just to save his ass, just to get out of the consequence he did deserve, showing that what the freaking Wolverine had said hadn’t been that wrong. And the worst part was that everything had been futile, since he is over the Hulk’s knee anyway. 

Tony isn’t swearing or demanding the Hulk to let him go anymore – his legs are just moving out of pure reflex – he can’t bring himself to do it, not when an annoying sense of guilt and remorse has settle in his stomach. 

Why does he always end up in situations that are this extreme? Of all the people who could have spanked him – yes, Tony is pretty aware of how many people would like to take revenge on him somehow – he had to end up over the knee of the only person – monster, scientific accident, whatever – from whom he can’t get away. But, can Tony really blame the Hulk for doing this? He knows he can’t, even if he will never admit it, he knows the Hulk wouldn’t be doing this if Tony had listened to Steve, if he hadn’t put his life in danger. 

Who did that, really? Most of the people that have surrounded him all his life let him do whatever he wanted to do, without regard of how dangerous or self-destructive it was, too afraid of losing the benefits and perks that came from being Tony Stark’s “friend”. Sure, Tony had Rhodey and Pepper, who did care about his well-being, but there had already been too much familiarity between them after some time that Tony learned to play them out a bit and stopped really listening to them, doing whatever he felt like to at the end. 

Sure, now Tony has his team, The Avengers, and he’s sure they care about him as much as he cares about them, but that’s part of the deal of being a member of a team, isn’t it? You look after each other, you advise each other, you try to keep each other safe, it’s like the logic thing to do. But then, there’s the Hulk, who only thinks about smashing things, who isn’t aware of the unspoken rules of belonging to a team, who can punch Thor or Steve like it was the most normal thing to do, who can destroy the place they call home without thinking twice. And yet, he cares about and looks after Tony. Only Tony, apparently. And Tony can’t help feeling a complete jackass for not appreciating this – it’s not like he thinks he should be grateful for the spanking, don’t misunderstand this, it’s more like he thinks he has to acknowledge that the Hulk’s intentions are not bad. 

Tony can feel how his rear stings more and more as the Hulk keeps delivering the swats, even if his pants hadn’t been pulled down, they’re not offering any protection whatsoever. He can tell the motion is not as fast and hard as it was in the beginning, but they hurt no less because of that. More and more tears well up in his eyes, and it’s getting harder to keep quiet, but Tony is still determined to be as stoic as possible. 

Twenty-five. He got spanked twenty-times – Tony couldn’t help counting, sometimes his brain works like that – although he’s sure a Hulk’s swat would count as three or four normal smacks. Tony know his butt must be totally red, he doesn’t need to look at it to confirm it, and it sure throbs like crazy.

Even like that, Tony can proudly say that he got through the spanking with dignity, as he just shed one single tear. But when the Hulk lifts him up and pulls him closer to his chest, hugging him again, with such a tenderness nobody would ever imagine he possesses, being considerate enough not to even graze his sore rear, Tony loses it. He can’t stop the tears from falling freely over his cheeks as he begins to sob, hiding his face against the Hulk’s shoulder. Tony sobs because all the adrenaline is long gone from his body and the soreness is more tangible, because the realization of what could’ve have happened is clear in his mind now, because his rear hurts like hell. But most of all, Tony sobs because he gets the feeling he doesn’t deserve such a treatment. He shouldn’t be the one who the Hulk cares for. 

And yet, he is. 

Rubbing his back warmly, the Hulk starts to rock him back and forth and grunts what Tony thinks is a soothing phrase – in Hulkglish, of course – whenever one of his sobs becomes a bit loud. He doesn’t realize when his eyelids start to feel very heavy, nor when he begins to doze off. By the time he hears some steps approaching them, and the voice of Steve asking him if everything was all right, Tony is already with a first-class ticket in his hand that would take him directly to dreamland.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your comments and kudos, they really cheer me up! And thanks too to those people who took their time to let me know about some mistakes I had, you have no idea how much I appreciate it :D
> 
> I struggled a little with this chapter. I was even too close to kick my laptop since I thought I’d lost the chapter after all the time I’d spent trying to take it out of my mind, it was rather frustrating. And then the Internet started to fail, jeez! XD
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, and once again, if you see any error, let me know, I do want to improve my English and my writing skills :)

He's _not_ sick. He's definitely not sick. His head is throbbing as a result of using his sight for too long. He's sneezing because there's too much dust in the air, his body temperature is warmer than usual because he was working with a welding torch just a few minutes ago, and his body feels heavy and sore due to the lack of sleep and food. That's it. Everything had an explanation. None of those things – because Tony is _not_ calling them symptoms – mean he’s sick. Tony Stark never gets sick. 

"Sir, everything seems to indicate that you're getting a cold," JARVIS dares to say. Hasn't he heard all what Tony was thinking about some seconds ago? He's not sick!

"Well, I'm afraid I'll have to adjust your sensors, because they're obviously failing," Tony snaps, regretting giving the A.I. the ability of checking his vital signs. One day he will learn that all he invents can be used against him too. 

"Sir? –"

"Shut up or I’m gonna put you on mute. You know you're not my favorite creation right now," Tony warns, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, why does everything look so blurry? 

"But sir, y–" 

"I told you to shut up," Tony cuts him off again, "I'm not sick, no matter what your sensors tell you. You know I never get sick," Tony assures as he goes back working. JARVIS decides it’s better to keep quiet for now. 

\- - - - -

Not really understanding how something like this could have happened, Tony is sure as hell his nose and eyes broke down, since they’re literally leaking like if they’re like a turn-on faucet. 

If Tony keeps his eyes open for more than one minute, tears start to well up in the corners until he can't see, and if he doesn't close them, the tears fall on his cheeks, making him look like if he were crying. And his nose, freaking runny nose, Tony can’t understand how so much liquid can come out from it; but the worst thing is not having to blow his nose every 30 seconds, the worst thing is that he can't really breathe and he’s being forced to keep his mouth open in order to do so. 

And the throbbing of his head? Well, it sorts of change into a migraine, which feels so much worse now that, apparently, his body has absorbed the sun somehow, as he feels extremely hot. 

Tony swears as he flops down on the desk, feeling so exhausted to keep himself upright. JARVIS doesn’t need to be asked to vanish all the holograms. 

OK, he _is_ sick.

He has a freaking cold. A cold! Tony hates colds, he rather be hit by a bullet than having a cold. Colds are awful, they’re the only sickness that are not bad enough to be considered serious or dangerous, but bad enough to make you feel like shit and knock you down for two days at least. You can take pills, you can get a shot, you can try home remedies, you can try everything you want, but everybody knows that the only way of recovering from a cold is getting a lot of rest. 

Needless to say that Tony kind of hates resting too, especially when resting is the opposite of not working on his suits. 

Damn his luck! Tony could've have gotten sick two weeks ago, when Pepper dragged him from meeting to meeting to deal with things that, apparently, just Tony Stark could deal with. But no! He had to get sick now that he had a couple – only a couple! – of days off! Now, when not even a battle would make him leave his workshop – yeah, Fury had benched him after all the chasing-Hulk thing, what a surprise. Now that he had come up with some interesting ideas to upgrade his armor and make it a bit less vulnerable against freaking mutants with freaking abilities to control metal. Damn his bad timing! 

All of a sudden, Tony feels the need to sneeze, and he does it. Once. Twice. Three times. Then again. And Again. And again. And when he thinks he’s done, he sneezes a couple of times more. By the time Tony is sure there’s no more sneezing, most of the surface of the desk is spatter with saliva and there’s more of that annoying liquid coming out of his nose, although it’s more like dangling from it, as well as thicker and greener. 

“Ugh, this is disgusting,” Tony thinks out loud, cleaning his nose with the sleeve of his t-shirt, which is disgusting too, but he figures it’s better than having that thing hanging there. 

“Sir, I –”

“Save it JARVIS,” Tony interrupts the A.I., trying to stand up from the stool, “I’m leaving already.” Because he might be stubborn as hell and he will always try to ignore any illness, but Tony does know when to stop, when it’s something that can’t be taken lightly, when staying in his workshop would only mean that he would spread all the germs all over the place, unable to keep his sneezes at bay, making it probable to catch something again later. 

In order to stand still, Tony has to hold on to the corner of the desk, as everything around him is whirling. He takes some steps forward and winces a little due to the pain he feels in every conjunction. Honestly, not even when he’s been beaten up during a battle he feels this bad. Reaching the elevator turns out to be an odyssey, since his balance seems to be inexistent right now, and he can’t quite hold on to anything, since every piece of furniture in the room refuses to stay still. 

“Take me to my floor,” Tony orders as soon as he steps inside the elevator, leaning on one of the walls and closing his eyes to ease the dizziness, happy about not having to make an effort of pushing any button. 

The movement of the elevator makes him dizzier, and he’s very grateful when it stops just a few seconds later. Tony opens his eyes slowly, trying to gather the enough strength he will need to cross all the way to his room. He can’t help feeling a little confused when he focuses enough to realize the room that lies in front of him is not the living room of his floor, but the communal one. Or maybe the tears that keep welling up stop him from seeing correctly. 

“JARVIS?” Tony asks with the intention of verifying where he is. 

“Sorry sir, but I strongly recommend you take something to lower your temperature, it’s a bit high,” JARVIS advises, letting Tony know why the elevator had stopped in that floor. 

Sighing, Tony takes the advice without complaining, which means he’s certainly not feeling OK. The only thing is that the distance between the elevator and the kitchen – where the medicine is – seems way too long now. If he lost his balance a couple of times from his desk to the elevator, it would be something extraordinary if he didn’t fall down in the middle of the living room, being forced to crawl all the way to the counter in the kitchen. 

Tony sets a foot outside, and the feeling of being in a room where everything twirls is back, but he continues walking anyway. He really wishes the Hulk were here to scoop him up and save him the trouble of walking.  
He stops dead, the realization of what he just thought hitting him like a bucket of ice water. 

Tony _did not_ think that. Tony _couldn’t have_ thought that. 

It was irrational. It was crazy. Why would he think something like that when the only thing he wanted was the Hulk to leave him alone? The fever must be messing with his brain.

Determined to reach the kitchen and get the pills so he can go to his room to lie down on his bed as fast as possible, Tony keeps walking, though kind of slower than usual. It takes him about ten minutes – when it would take him no more than two minutes when being healthy – to reach the kitchen, and one more minute to find out that bending to open a drawer is the worst thing you can do when being very dizzy already. The room starts to whirl even more, and Tony is forced to sit down on a stool in front of the kitchen island to avoid falling down. 

After waiting some minutes for the vertigo to stop, Tony groans loudly and lets his head and arms lean on the counter dramatically when it doesn’t. He should’ve gone straight to his room and let JARVIS send someone to give him some medicine – or not, whatever. There’s no way he can stand up right now without the risk of falling down. His head feels like it’s about to burst, his eyelids are burning, his breath is extremely hot and his limbs feel much heavier than they should. Yes, with each passing minute he’s getting worse, and he just hates it, as experience tells him this will just worsen more and more. 

And when it’s this bad, Tony knows he needs to hide from everybody. He has to distance himself from everyone, because he has this weird thing of getting clingy whenever he feels like crap due to any illness. He craves for comfort and physical contact with a shameful desperation. He wants someone to make him feel better, to be there and look after him, to lower his temperature by placing wet clothes on his forehead, to pamper him and cook something healthy and delicious for him. But he’s Tony Fucking Stark, and Tony Fucking Stark can’t let himself have those follies. 

Although, not allowing himself those things doesn’t meant he doesn’t want them. 

Therefore, the flashes that are stuffing Tony’s mind right now, of the Hulk picking him up and settling him comfortably in his arms, rocking him back and forth as he rubs small circles on his back, making him feel so calm and safe, are just the result of this annoying craving that takes over him whenever he gets sick. There’s no way he wants that. There’s no way he would be thinking about those things if he were completely healthy. 

So, Tony needs to go and lock himself up in his room as soon as possible. He doesn’t want to bump into anyone now that he’s feeling this vulnerable. Tony groans angrily when he tries to stand up again and he can’t, his head seems to need to be supported by something, otherwise the dizziness gets worse and he can feel his stomach getting upset. 

If the Hulk were there, his head would be leaning cozily on his shoulder. 

Another grunt leaves his mouth, Tony would hit his head against the counter if he could as a punishment for thinking such things. 

But the Hulk is not there, and he’s not going to be. It’s a wonder, but Clint hasn’t make Bruce hulk out in a while. And Bruce is trying to keep his distance from him, wanting to avoid one more scene like the last one – of course Bruce had found out about the last time the Hulk put Tony over his knee, and he wasn’t very comfortable with the idea. 

Slowly, Tony manages to put himself upright, and he can’t tell exactly what he feels when he sees Bruce coming into the kitchen. He wants to pretend nothing is wrong with him, he wants to talk to Bruce as if none of the things related to the Hulk have happened, he wants to do a lot of things and, at the same time, he wants to do nothing. But what Tony never imagined wanting to do was what he does next. 

“I want the Big Guy,” Tony says before he can’t stop himself, already knowing he will beat himself up later for voicing such a thing. He can feel how his cheeks turn red when he sees Bruce raising an eyebrow and opening his mouth in astonishment. 

Not more than three seconds later, Tony hears how Bruce’s clothes are ripped as he starts to get bigger and greener. Later, Tony will ask Bruce how he managed to transform so easily. Later, because all he can do right now is groaning of contentment while the Hulk slides his hands under his armpits and lifts him effortlessly, pulling him closer to his chest and surrounding him with his arms. Tony snuggles immediately, wondering why the Hulk’s skin feels so cool when it’s usually the opposite. He is the one who is warmer than usual, but his brain is too numb to realize that. 

Tony surely will have to have a serious talk with himself as soon as he gets better. One thing is that Bruce hulks out due to a battle or a provocation from Clint, and a different thing is that Tony asks him himself to do it. That’s _not_ acceptable. This _can’t_ happen again.

\- - - - -

“So, now Bruce doesn’t even need to be provoked to hulk out, huh?” Tony hears someone say a few feet from him. He opens one eye, not knowing how much time has passed nor remembering when he had dozen off. He can see, though a bit blurry, Clint standing in front of him, behind the Hulk, a grin spread on his face. “You missed your daddy and you asked him to spend some time with you?” Clint asks, mock in his voice. 

“Goway,” Tony babbles, too sleepy and worn out to speak clearly. 

“It’s understandable Tony, don’t worry, all kids want to spend time with their daddies,” Clint continues mocking, taking a sip of water from the glass he has in his hand. 

“Fuckoff,” Tony grumbles, deciding to close his eyes again, the malaise still too tangible to deal with the archer right now. 

“I would’ve done the same, you know. Maybe next time the Hulk can show up and we all can go to the zoo together,” Clint suggests, the grin spreading broader. 

“Shut up!” Tony barks, regretting doing it right away, as his head throbs horribly. 

“Clint!” Steve yells from the entrance, making Clint jump and Tony open his eyes and raise his head a little to be able to see him. “What did I tell you about making Bruce hulk out?!” Steve asks, clearly upset, walking toward them.  
“But I didn’t!” Clint objects, taking some steps backwards. 

“Of course you did! Why else would the Hulk be here?” Steve accuses, Tony smirks slightly as he places his head on the Hulk’s shoulder once more, not wanting to be a part of that argument. 

“I swear I didn’t! The Hulk was already here when I arrived! Ask Tony!” Clint says as he looks over Tony, pleading with his eyes, but Tony doesn’t even flinch, way too comfortable to care about anything else. Clint can’t stop himself from squealing a little when he feels Steve gripping his arm.

“I thought I was very clear when I told you to stop this, and I told you what was going to happen if you kept it up,” Steve warns, and Tony can see him walking towards the door, dragging Clint along. 

“But I didn’t do–” Tony hears Clint going quiet as soon as something that undoubtedly sounds like a smack echoes in the room. 

Tony could surely speak up for Clint. He could go and tell Steve that Clint hadn’t made Bruce transform into the Hulk. He could avoid whatever Steve was going to do to Clint unfairly. But he wouldn’t. Perhaps because he is feeling too bad to force himself to move. Maybe because this way he would get an indirect revenge for all the times Clint did cause the Hulk to show up. 

But the truth is that, Tony wouldn’t do it because if he did, he would have to admit he was the one who asked Bruce to let the Hulk out, and Tony isn’t sure if he’s ready to deal with that yet.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. 
> 
> Both my laptop and computer broke down and, besides the melt down that caused me because I'm kind of short on money and the repairing wasn't that cheap, the whole thing didn't leave me in a mood of writing. 
> 
> I started to write this chapter in my cell phone, though. But I don't know what I did, and it didn't saved, so, another melt down because I had really liked how it had turned out. 
> 
> I re-wrote it yesterday at night. I still like the first draft better (there where some things I couldn't remember how I had written them) but I guess this would have to do, because I kind of hate doing things twice :/ 
> 
> I really didn't check this chapter in detail, so, I get the feeling there are some mistakes in the tenses. Please let me know if you find any.
> 
> And again, thank you for all your comments! They are really appreciated :)

Over the years, Tony has done a lot of things he eventually came to regret. Sometimes it takes him a lot of analyzing to realize that, what he had considered to be a brilliant idea, wasn’t that great after all. Sometimes he realizes it right after he finished doing that thing, which he really shouldn’t have done. Sometimes someone else has to point out why his acts were everything but clever. And sometimes a horrible consequence, caused by his decision, is the thing that makes him realize he should really think before he acts. 

Although Tony has never acknowledged the feeling of regret during all those particular events. It always happens after–which is kind of obvious, otherwise, Tony may not have done a lot of those things. But this time was different. This time, Tony knew both of his actions weren’t going to bring him any good consequences, quite the opposite actually. A shame he had been too caught in the moment that he decided to ignore the uneasy feeling, the one that told him he should know better than to do what he was doing. 

Having the Hulk looking after him until he got well, comforting him, feeding him, making his temperature go back to normal, watching over him while he slept, preventing anything or anyone to bother him, even helping him when his nose got too stuffed; all those things didn’t seem to be something bad back then–not even when it contrasted with his incessant complaining about wanting the Hulk to leave him alone. Yes, Steve has been the one who provided the Hulk with the things that were necessary in order to do all of that, but the Hulk had been the one doing the hard work. Tony knows perfectly well he isn’t someone easy to deal with, especially when being sick; so, he appreciates the gesture. 

And not standing up for Clint, when he hadn't been the one who triggered Bruce’s change that time, made Tony listen to a small voice in the back of his head saying that that wasn't a nice or honorable thing to do. But then he remembered all the teasing and all the times when Clint had actually been the one to blame, and suddenly it wasn’t such a bad idea to keep quiet and let Steve be true to his word to whatever he had warned Clint about. Tony knew he would have to pay for that later, since Clint would surely want to get even with him. Yet, right then, it didn’t seem to matter that much. When Tony saw Clint squirming on his chair the next day while they were having dinner, and Clint had glared at him when he had smirked slightly, Tony was completely sure the payback would arrive, and it wouldn’t be pleasant. 

For those reasons, Tony can’t really complain about the last and current events, since everything has been his fault. There’s anyone to blame but him. He has been the one who started all this. If he had known how things would turn out, he might have acted differently. But he didn’t.

\- - - - -

"I don't know what's going or why this is happening," Tony had heard Bruce tell Steve one afternoon when he was passing by the kitchen on his way back to his workshop, "I mean, before, the Hulk just showed up during a battle or when Clint provoked me. But now, it's like every time I see Tony, I transform. I just don't get it." Bruce had finished saying, voice worried.

“It happens just like that? You just run into Tony and you hulk out?” Steve had asked, and the distance that separated Tony from them couldn’t make him miss the disbelief in Steve’s voice. 

“Yes."

"Doesn’t Tony do anything to trigger that reaction?" Steve had inquired. Tony had been tempted to approach Steve and demand him what he was implying, but he couldn’t let Bruce see him. 

"No," Bruce had answered, perhaps a little too quickly. “I mean, I’m not as worried as I was when all this started. I’m almost sure the Hulk won’t do anything bad as long as Tony is close, but that doesn’t mean I’m completely OK with this either. We’re talking about the Hulk, he’s never going to stop being dangerous no matter what. I can’t shake the feeling that this isn’t going to end well.”

Bruce had lied. What Bruce said had been a lie. Tony was more than sure that Bruce remembered that he had asked for the Hulk a few weeks ago, when he had gotten sick. Tony was sure–even if they haven’t exchanged words since then–because, the very next day after Bruce had changed back, he had asked JARVIS to let him inside the workshop since he needed to talk to Tony urgently (obviously, Tony had asked JARVIS to not let anyone inside under any circumstances). The access was denied, of course, as Tony knew in advanced what that urgent topic Bruce wanted discuss was. 

What else should he have done? What else could he have done instead of hiding in his workshop? What the hell was he going to answer when Bruce questioned him about the reasons why he had asked for the Hulk when all he had done since this started was demanding Bruce to stop hulking out? Tony hadn’t been ready to talk about that with Bruce. Hell, he hadn’t even been ready to talk about that with himself. Why the hell had he done that? What the hell had he been thinking about to consider that to be a good idea? Seriously, what’s wrong with him?

Thus, Tony had kept avoiding Bruce–well, he had kept avoiding _everyone_ actually–being way far from ready to deal with whatever that was happening. But living in the same place meant that Tony would have to run into Bruce sooner or later. The thing was that, when it happened, when the doors of the elevator opened and Tony found himself in front of Bruce with no escape route whatsoever, Bruce didn’t even have the chance to mouth anything since he hulked out as soon as he saw Tony. What the fucking hell?!

And the same happened the second time they ran into each other. And the third time. And by the sixth time both of them came to an unspoken agreement of avoiding each other to prevent the Hulk from showing up. Bruce was far from comfortable with hulking out unnecessarily. And Tony, well, he wasn’t that uncomfortable anymore–Tony stubbornly pushed to the very back of his mind that little voice that told him it was the opposite of uncomfortable–but Fury would have to wear a Mad-Eye Moody costume next Halloween party (Tony could totally build him that eye pad) before he would admit that. Even to himself.

\- - - - -

So, Tony’s great idea of asking for the Hulk had backfired horribly. Now the mere act of coming across him is enough to trigger Bruce’s transformation. How the hell was Tony going to get out of this? How can he get himself into trouble after trouble? Because Tony would love to say that that was the only thing that he had to deal with after his two wonderful ideas of that day, but of course it wasn’t. Why would it be if life’s a bitch and, apparently, his ass is so fucking awesome that biting it has become life’s current hobby?

No, dealing with Bruce’s transformations wasn’t a big deal if Tony took into account that the only thing he had to do, to prevent that from happening, was avoiding Bruce–which was rather easy when Bruce was trying to do the same. But the other thing, courtesy of Clint, was impossible to elude since it happened once the Hulk had made his appearance. Much to Tony’s dismay, he was no match for the Hulk, at least not without his armor (well, not even with his armor, but Tony was already working on that). 

The first time Bruce had hulked out just for looking at him, Tony had been too shocked to do anything. The second time was a bit different, though. Tony struggled, kicked, hit, punched, squirmed, bit, and a lot of other things he got the feeling he shouldn’t have done–doing something that might anger the Hulk was never a good idea. But Tony had freaked out. He had already been suffering inner conflicts since he didn’t know anymore how he felt about this whole situation, added to the realization of the fact that the Hulk had shown up for a second time just for being in front of him. That had greatly agitated Tony and he just had wanted out. 

Needless to say the Hulk hadn’t even flinched, he had just sat down there with an annoyed expression on his face and waited until Tony had gotten tired out and had calmed down. It’s true that the Hulk wasn’t known for being smiley, yet Tony could have sworn his face showed the same expression parents have whenever their kids are throwing a tantrum and they are just waiting for them to stop. That had upset Tony more, though he stopped anyway; contrary to popular belief, Tony did know when it was a lost battle. However, that didn’t mean he had given up. 

If brute strength hadn’t been the key to get out of this situation, Tony would have to make use of his second best skill: talking his way out (which should be considered a superpower according to him, as he had relieved himself of many things thanks to it, and no all superheroes could brag about that). A shame that having a conversation with the Hulk wasn’t really possible. The Hulk had just stared at him, a confused expression on his face, when Tony listed all the reasons why he should let him go. 

By then, Tony had been reaching the next level of frustration and the only thing he thought was left to do was insulting the Big Guy. And man! Tony really knew a lot of insults–even sailors would have been ashamed if they had heard some of the words he used–he even got creative and started to invent new swear words (good thing Steve hadn’t been around to listen to him, because that would have definitely made his mind up on implementing that swear-jar nobody was backing him up). And Tony could have absolutely created more swear words enough to write a one-thousand-ways-to-insult-a-Hulk book if he hadn’t been shut by something that was pushed into his mouth.

Tony hadn’t even had to look at it to know what it was. A pacifier. A fucking pacifier! Damn Clint! So this was his revenge? What the hell was wrong with that guy?! Tony had certainly been waiting for the pay back which would doubtlessly arrive sooner or later, but nothing would have made Tony imagine that this was going to be it. Because Tony was sure as hell that Clint had been the one who had provided the Hulk with _that thing_. Where else could the Hulk have gotten it from? It wasn’t like the Big Guy went shopping downtown every other day. No, this was totally getting out of hand, Tony was going to kill Clint for real this time and then he was going to kick his own ass too for letting things reach this point. 

But first things first. Getting rid of the fucking _thing_ –oh, Tony wasn’t even going to say its name. Without thinking twice, Tony had spitted it out as soon as the Hulk stopped holding it in place. Though his mouth had been free from it just for a few seconds, since the Hulk retrieved almost immediately and placed it back. So, Tony had spitted it out one more time. And a second time. And a third time. And by the twenty-seventh time he lost track, but the Hulk kept putting it back in place every single time. For more than an hour. If Tony had thought nobody would ever beat his stubbornness, he had been very wrong. 

Everybody might think that the Hulk would be the one who would get tired first, as Tony was well known for making most people back off with his obstinacy, but it had been the other way around. 

At the end, Tony had kept the _thing_ in his mouth, and he had been very surprised when he found himself giving it occasional sucks. It had been soothing. For Jesus Christ! Tony would really need to get his brain scanned to see what was wrong with it, because getting relaxed by it until the point of falling asleep was not right.

\- - - - -

So, there he is now, snuggled on the Hulk’s arms, drinking some juice from a bottle that the Hulk is holding for him–more like trying to prevent Tony from pushing it away, actually. Tony had run into Bruce on his way out of the kitchen, being too absentminded (as a result of spending four days in a row in his workshop) to ask JARVIS if Bruce was around. Tony got thirsty after some hours of pretending to play with the Hulk, waiting for the best opportunity to run away–which unfortunately he knew, deep inside, would never arrive. How was he supposed to know that the Hulk was going to take out a bottle when he asked him for some water?

Needless to say that Tony fought against it at the beginning, but like the pacifier–which the Hulk now insisted to place in his mouth every time he was with him–Tony got too tired to keep refusing it, and being already too thirsty, he settled down and opened his mouth to accept the nipple the Hulk kept pushing against his lips. It took him some minutes to get the hand of drinking from a bottle, but it wasn’t that hard after all. 

As long as the Hulk didn’t try to burp him everything would be OK.

No. 

As long as nobody else got inside the room, everything would be OK. 

The wrestle with his overwhelming emotions, caused by of all this, is bearable as long as nobody sees how far things have gone. Because Clint may know what the Hulk has been doing, but he doesn’t know that Tony is not totally against it anymore. And he doesn’t need to know. Nobody will ever know, Tony would make sure of that.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Both of my computers are working now. And even faster because I got more RAM memory. I'm penniless, but in this moment I couldn't care less about it XD.
> 
> You know what I always ask, any mistake, please, please, let me know :)
> 
> I think this is coming to an end. I guess there'll be maybe 4 more chapters and that's it. I'm happy because, now that my computers broke down, I was checking the information in my external hard disks (I got three of them, 1 TB each o.O, I really needed to get rid of some files) I found the first draft of this story, which was written back in 2012. Wow, it's kind of similar but totally different at the same time. SO, I'm happy because, even after so many years, I managed to write it :p
> 
> Anyway, just rambling here. Enjoy!

The Stark Tower–that big ugly building in New York, as he once described it–became the Avengers Tower after Loki’s first attack to the Earth, in which he was given not just a room, but an entire floor to live in. It was a place Steve had problems to call home. He admits he didn’t find it comfortable at all in the beginning. All the luxury, the technology and the excessive space contrasted so much with what he was used to, that Steve couldn’t really feel at home. He even preferred to spend more time in his much smaller and modest–but cozier–apartment in Brooklyn, spending the night in the Tower when it was strictly necessary, like after a battle, for a meeting, when someone needed to be taken care of and so on. 

Eventually, Steve started to feel more and more comfortable there, until he decided to move in for good. It turned out that living in the Tower with all the Avengers was more unpredictable and crazier than life in the army. Hell, some nights were even more dangerous than the nights he spent up during his war days–perhaps that was why living there felt just right. 

But how was life there going to be any other way? Having a God, two skilled spies, a genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist, a national icon and a Hulk living under the same roof surely created a hell of different scenarios every single day. A blooming thunder and a blackout don’t mean a thunderstorm anymore, a spoon becomes a deadly weapon when there’s too much testosterone involved, a head sticking out of the vents in the middle of the night don’t cause a heart-attack any longer, a killer toaster that chases everyone during breakfast now is something kind of expected, and a small earthquake followed by some howls and groans are likely to happen once in a while. 

Anybody else would considered those things weird and abnormal, some would even freak out if they were caught in the middle of such events, but not Steve. He’s not going to deny that sometimes things can get pretty dangerous and would probably be out of hands if he didn’t do anything about it, but some other things turn to be rather funny and heart-warming. Those things have become part of Steve’s daily life and he has even grown fond of them. 

Thus, Steve is so used to live many unusual situations that, when Daddy Hulk (he does not mean to call him by that name, but Clint says it so frequently lately, that it started to become kind of catchy and it somehow worked his way into Steve’s vocabulary) began with all the parenting thing with Tony, it wasn’t that shocking, Steve got used to it rather quickly. 

He never thought there were going to be some things that would bewilder him for real. 

Like the time when he had walked in the gym and had seen the Hulk, Tony in his arms against his chest and an empty bottle lying on the floor in front of them. The Hulk had been patting Tony on the back, as if he had been… burping him? Steve hadn’t wanted to look into what exactly had been happening, he had left right away as if the scene in front of his eyes had been something that wasn’t meant for him to see. 

Or the time when he had arrived from a mission very early in the morning, and JARVIS had informed him that Tony had been doing his thing of working for days in a row, refusing to ingest anything but coffee. It wasn’t the first time–and surely it wouldn’t be the last one either–that Steve would have to drag Tony out of his workshop. He had gone inside and he hadn’t been that surprised when he saw Tony lying on the table–once in a while the fatigue was too much and Tony ended up falling asleep. What had surprised Steve had been the fact that Tony’s thumb had been half-placed in his mouth, a thin steam of drool running across the finger, which revealed he had been sucking on it. Again, he left almost immediately. 

Yes, those two things certainly baffled him. What was going on? Steve couldn’t put his finger on what was happening, not really. Tony didn’t seem to be bothered by the whole Daddy-Hulk situation anymore. That was kind of surreal. 

Although, now that Steve thinks about it, he hasn’t even heard Tony complaining about it for some weeks, as he usually did. And Tony should have been doing so, because, as far as Steve knows, Bruce has started to change into the Hulk just for the mere act of bumping into Tony. Surely Tony has something to say about it, he can’t be happy with these new events. 

Or has Tony been secretly planning on doing something about it? Something impulsive and reckless as he usually does. Something that, according to him, would get him out of trouble, but that would mess up things more in the end. 

Knowing Tony, that’s what’s probably happening, and Steve can’t help feeling a bit uneasy imagining what Tony might be making up in that creative head of his. Because, contrary to what he argues, most of his plans backfire, and the consequences cause him to make up something else in order to get out of the new problem, and that new problem turns out to be worse than the first one, and well, that’s a never ending story. 

So, a talk, Steve thinks it’s about time to have a talk with Tony. It’s about time to find out what is really happening and do something about it. He hasn’t really done anything up until now, but the feeling in his gut, that tells him this is going downhill inevitably, can’t be shaken off anymore. 

Steve rides the elevator down the communal living room, with the intention of looking for Tony and settle things down once and for all. He might have as well asked JARVIS for his creator’s whereabouts, but when Tony orders the A.I. not to give out his location, JARVIS is like a grave. 

He hasn’t even set both feet outside the elevator, when someone runs right into him, unusually making him stumble a little due to the force of the impact. The other person undoubtedly falls down on the floor. 

“Tony?” Steve says as he looks down and sees him. He rises on eyebrow when he notices Tony’s state: he’s naked from the waist down. This is far the first time Steve has seen Tony naked, in fact, everybody in the Tower has seen him naked at least a couple of times, the man has no modesty at all (and whoever that has access to the Internet might have seen him in his birthday suit as well). But Steve can’t help wondering what had made Tony lose just his pants and not all his complete attire. “You all right? What's going on here?” Steve asks, but he receives no answer at all. 

Tony looks too stricken, he doesn’t even make a comment about having hurt himself during the impact, and Steve knows he surely has, as Tony has pointed out thousands of times that his body is like a rock. At the precise moment when Steve is about to outstretch his hand to help Tony stand up, he hears the Hulk growls from the living room behind them. 

Tony’s face turns white. 

“Move!” Tony demands while he pushes Steve to get him out of his way, but Steve being too confused, doesn’t step aside. That gives the Hulk enough time to approach them and place an arm around Tony’s waist. 

“No! Let the fuck go of me!” Tony bellows when the Hulk lifts him and starts to walk back into the living room, “I’m not doing this! This has been enough! Put me the fuck down right now!” 

What is all this commotion? Steve steps outside the elevator and walks toward the living room, stopping dead when he sees the scene in front of him: the Hulk has managed to lie Tony down on the floor, using one of his big hands to keep him down in place, and with the other he’s holding what definitely looks like a… 

Diaper? 

Really, a diaper? OK, wait, wait, wait. What’s happening here? When did all this situation get this far? Yes, Steve came here to talk to Tony and figure this whole thing out, because going from just scooping up to bottle feeding has certainly been a huge step. But this? Diapering? Steve is afraid that this would surely be the straw that would break the camel’s back, and he can’t allow that. It’s true that Steve wants to avoid making the Hulk angry at all costs, maybe that’s why he has taken a back seat up to now. Even though, that doesn’t mean Steve doesn’t care about Tony or about how he must be feeling due to all this events. Steve can’t sit on his hands anymore. 

Yet, his legs don’t seem to receive the signal from his brain, as all Steve do is standing stupefied in the entrance. Yes, he has to do something, but what? What can he possibly do? Attack the Hulk? There’s no way Steve can beat him. Help Tony to get away from the Hulk? First, good luck with that, and second, even if he managed to do it, what would happen next? The Hulk wouldn’t stop until he found Tony, and he wouldn’t care about the things that got destroyed or the people who got hurt in the process. 

No, Steve stays right there not because he wants to, but rather because he has no idea of what to do. 

“No! I told you no!” Tony barks, flailing his legs so the Hulk can't grab them. 

"I've heard diapering fussy kids was hard, but I think the Hulk is having a harder time here," Clint mocks from the sofa, cross-legged and arms resting on the back of it, his eyes focus on the TV, though he glances sporadically glance at Tony. Steve hadn't even realized he was there. 

"Shut up! I'm gonna fucking kill you!" Tony yells at Clint, and Steve can see Tony shivers a bit when the Hulk lets a frustrated growl out. Tony just wouldn't stop moving, and it certainly is getting on the Hulk’s nerves. 

"Hey, why the resentment? I'm not the one who’s trying to put the diaper on you," Clint protests, voice teasing. 

"You son of a bitch, you gave him that fucking _thing_!" Tony assures, pointing at the diaper, without stopping squirming, "You've been giving him all those fucking things! This stops now! You hear me, you fucking piece of shit! Now! Or you won’t like the consequences! I’m sick of your fucking games!” Tony threatens, and Steve can’t help wincing because of all the swearing. He understands it, though. “Damn it Hulk, I told you I'm not wearing that fucking thing!" Tony emphasizes each word with a kick. Steve wonders if the Hulk feels something more than tickles when Tony’s feet make contact with his hand. 

"What other things are you talking about?" Clint asks, a smirk starting to show in his face. Apparently, he hasn’t realized that Steve is there, since his attention is fully on Tony now, the TV long forgotten. 

"You know perfectly well what I'm talking about!" Tony says while he tries to reach for the diaper. Perhaps he thinks he would prevent the Hulk from putting it on him if he takes it away. Steve feels confused, he has no idea what they’re talking about. 

"Well, that's interesting.” Clint uncrosses his legs and leans forward a little. “Let's just say I know what you're talking about,” he concedes, and Steve looks away from Tony to focus his eyes on Clint, trying to pay attention to figure out what those two are talking about. “If it's what I think it is, I wonder why you're complaining until now, because it’s already been some weeks since I gave the Hulk what, according to you, I supposedly gave him," Clint finishes saying.

"I haven't seen you!" Tony argues, his voice reaching a tiny high pitch unintentionally when the Hulk manages to grip both of his ankles. It hadn’t been a good idea to focus all his attention on reaching for the diaper, as it seems Tony forgot for a moment to keep his legs away from the Hulk, and this one undoubtedly took advantage of this. 

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s why. Living in the same place and having an A.I. checking on us all the time, surely makes it very difficult to get ahold of me,” Clint says, sarcasm clear in his voice. 

A panic expression shows on Tony’s face when the hand that was holding him back in place a second ago, now is working on unfolding the diaper. Steve thinks Tony might as well take that as an opportunity and try to get away, but the Hulk’s other hand is still holding his legs firmly, and there’s no way he’s going to let Tony go now that he finally has him where he wants. 

“You know, I’d be gladly helping you if you had done the same for me last time,” Clint comments, leaning back again, returning his attention to the TV. And suddenly, everything falls in place. 

Those things Tony and Clint were discussing were the bottle and the diaper–and who knows what else. So, Clint had been the one who had given those items to the Hulk. To be honest, Steve hadn’t given it much thought to it, being more intrigued by Tony’s behavior than the items themselves. But now that he thinks about it, it perfectly makes sense. Who else would provide the Hulk with those objects? 

What a nerve! Steve thought he had made his point very clear, about wanting Clint to stop messing around with Tony and the Hulk, but evidently, he didn’t. Oh, Steve knew he shouldn’t have gone so easy on Clint, but he couldn’t shake off the feeling of being stepping over the line by spanking a teammate. Steve is the captain and he is in charge of everybody, but he thinks that doesn’t give him the right of putting someone over his knee whenever he thinks it’s suitable. 

Shaking off that feeling wouldn’t be that difficult now, though.

Gaining control of his movements again, Steve walks quietly and stops until he’s standing up in front of the TV. He can see when the blood literally drains from Clint’s face as he acknowledges his presence, and can listen too how he gulps. Steve shakes his head when Clint’s eyes move to look at the entrance, an unspoken warning understood by both of them.

Before approaching Clint, Steve hears a groan and turns his head to look at the Hulk. He had managed to put the diaper on Tony, and now the latter is sitting on his lap, kept in place by a green arm around his waist. Tony’s face is completely red, though Steve doesn’t know if it is due to anger or embarrassment, or maybe both. 

Steve sighs deeply. This has totally gotten out of hand, and Steve is sure that it’s just a matter of time before the bomb explodes.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was planning on updating this until next Friday, but today I got a phone call telling me I got the job I'd applied for (yayy!, well, not really, I already have two other jobs XD, I'm totally stressed u.u, but yeah, I was born poor, so, deal with it XD) and I'm afraid I won't have a lot of free time for the next weeks.
> 
> So, because of that, I want to finish this ASAP. I'm already working on the next chapter, hopefully I will have finished it by next week, but I'm not sure, it depends on how things work out in my new job.
> 
> Again, and I know I repeat myself a lot, I just checked the chapter twice, and I'm sure a lot of mistakes remain unseen, so, you see one, let me know, please.
> 
> Thanks a lot for your comments and kudos! 
> 
> Enjoy.

No matter how much Tony squirms, no position reliefs him from the now painful pressure in his abdomen. His bladder is bursting. That’s what happens when you hold it for too long. He would have gladly gone to the bathroom like half an hour ago if only the Hulk hadn’t stopped him from doing so the fourteen times he had tried to stand up and leave the room.

Tony sighs loudly as he sees the Hulk pushing a pile of Legos toward him. He's not fucking playing anymore, why can't the Hulk get it? Tony can’t keep pretending to be interested in the toys around him when all his attention is focused on preventing having an accident right there. _It wouldn't be an accident, you know, not when the diaper will catch it all_. Tony hears that annoying voice inside his head again, the same voice he’d been pushing to the very back of his mind for weeks; though lately, for some reason, he hasn’t managed to turn it down anymore. 

A frustrated groan leaves his throat. That's the fucking problem. That fucking _thing_ between his legs (of course Tony is still refusing to call any of those stupid items by their name). Tony wouldn’t think twice about letting it go if he was wearing just jeans or boxers, peeing his pants would be a thousand times better than peeing in that _thing_ the Hulk had put on him some hours ago. He's not doing it, damn it! His bladder would burst first before he let himself go in that _thing_.

For Fuck's sake! How did he end up in this situation? How on earth did he finish sitting on the floor, with a _thing_ in his mouth, another _thing_ between his legs, and wearing a fucking outfit that was definitely meant for babies?!–Couldn't the Hulk notice that his legs are cold?! _Yeah, because being cold is what you should be angry about_. Oh, shut up! 

Someone kill him now, please. Where are all these stupid enemies when they’re needed? 

"Can't you see I don't want to play with your stupid toys?!" Tony snaps, making the _thing_ in his mouth fall, "get them away from me!" He demands, but the Hulk just stares at him, the expression in his face showing clearly that he doesn’t understand the reason of this sudden outburst. 

The Hulk reaches for the _thing_ that had fallen seconds ago and places it back in his mouth – Tony doesn’t even fight it, knowing perfectly well that if he does, they’re going to play that non-game where he spits the _thing_ out and the Hulk places it back for hours. Then, the Hulk pushes the pile of Legos away, and takes a toy truck that was lying near his knee. He moves it closer to Tony, expecting him to take it. But Tony doesn’t, he glares at it instead. Oh, if glares could kill! Or turn into laser beams at least, any option would be useful now. 

A howl makes Tony take the toy truck without giving it much a thought, but before the Hulk can show any sign of contentment, Tony throws it at the wall as hard as he can, breaking it. 

"I told you I don't fucking want any of your fucking toys!" Tony repeats, spitting out the _thing_ in his mouth one more time, "you can take all of them and shove them up your ass for all I care!!" In no way does Tony mean to stump his legs on the floor, nor he means to shriek when the Hulk grabs both his wrists and pulls him up. 

Shit! This is a déjà vu. Tony closes his eyes hard, expecting the swat the Hulk would surely deliver to his rear, but for Tony’s dismay, the swat never arrives. And why dismay? (Tony should be happy his butt remained unharmed) well, because what the Hulk does is so much worse, according to Tony, so much worse that Tony would have preferred to be over the Hulk’s knee getting a spanking. When Tony feels the Hulk turning him around a bit and poking his padded butt, Tony feels ready to die right then right there, literally, as he is sure as hell the Hulk just checked if the _thing_ between legs was wet. 

Does the Hulk really think his moodiness is due to a soiled diaper? What the fuck! He’s _not_ a child! There’s no way Tony is going to get fussy when he makes use of the _thing_. 

_When you make use of the diaper? ‘When’? So, you’re doing it_. Again that fucking voice says inwardly, making Tony’s irritability increase. 

Before Tony can protest, he finds himself being scooped up and leaned against the Hulk’s chest. Wriggling desperately, Tony tries to get away from the embrace, but the only thing he accomplishes to do is making the Hulk start to bounce him, intending to settling him down. Tony groans loudly and closes his eyes, concentrating hard again on preventing an accident. It's getting more difficult, though, since the bouncing is applying more pressure to his already throbbing bladder. 

Unintentionally, a whine escapes from Tony’s mouth. He knows it’s just a matter of time before he can’t hold it anymore, and that makes him feel miserable. The thing is that, again, this situation is totally his fault, there’s no one else who Tony can blame it on. The _thing_ should have been the last straw. Tony should have put a stop to all this after the first time he was put on that _thing_. 

But he didn't. 

That day, the first day it happened, after being fed with some warm milk in a bottle and having taken a nap, the only resolution that Tony had taken when he had woken up had been not bumping into Bruce ever again. That had been it. Of all the measures he could have taken to end with all this annoying situation once and for all, that one had been it. Wasn’t Tony supposed to be a genius? Didn’t he realize that that wasn’t going to be possible since both of them lived under the same roof and belonged to the same team? Hadn’t he already tried that before unsuccessfully? 

Despite that fact, Tony felt hopeful, especially after being able to avoid Bruce for two weeks. Perhaps it had been because of the business trip he had to take, which kept him away from the Tower for ten days. Or maybe, because the days he was there, he never left his workshop. Whatever the reason had been, his plan had been going wonderfully. And then, Loki had to go and decide that he hadn’t attacked the Earth for a while, thus the Avengers were summoned. Everybody knows now how things tend to end like when the Hulk shows up for a battle. Tony ended up trapped in the Hulk’s embrace, plus the _thing_ between his legs. Apparently, the Hulk had the intention to make that a habit, just like the other _thing_ in his mouth.

The second time his plan didn’t work was when Tony had the great idea to go and face Bruce, to demand him to stop hulking out. It was more than obvious than having a conversation with Bruce wasn’t possible anymore, since the Hulk showed up almost immediately. Obviously, Tony already knew that, but he had gone to a charity gala that evening, and he had drunk more alcohol than he should have. It had been a while since he had stopped getting wasted like that, but that night, he had been too stressed out, and that inner voice started to make comments he hadn’t like, and then he had found out that the numbness caused by the alcohol shut it up.

Before Tony had time to realize what he was doing, he found himself in front of the door of Bruce’s room, because somewhere between the ride back from the gala to the Tower, he had decided that that would be a good idea, his senses too benumbed by the liquor to recognize how stupid that really was. Needless to say that as soon as Bruce opened the door, after almost being knocked down by Tony – that’s the version Tony remembers, and he’s sticking to it, though the bruises in his knuckles says he was far from doing so – the Hulk turned up, and the speech that Tony had prepared died in his throat before it had been given.

What happened after that, Tony can just speculate, since the next scene in his memory is him waking up surrounded by a lot of pillows, blankets, stuffed animals and toys in a room that later he came to recognize as the room Bruce and he had built inside the Tower to serve as a kind of cell for the Hulk, in case the latter needed to be held back. 

Although Tony didn’t remember setting up all those items there. The last time he had been there, the room had been completely empty – after all, it wasn’t like the Hulk was going to need a couch where to sit on or a table where to sit at to have lunch. That meant Clint had done it again. Clint had provided the Hulk with all those items. The fucking asshole! How had he had the nerve to keep doing that after the well-given spanking he had endured? Was this going to be a never ending revenge? But that time Tony had done nothing, it hadn’t been his fault that Steve had decided to show up at that exact moment! 

Tony remembers wanting to stand up to go look for Clint and kick his ass, but when he straightened up a bit, his head throbbed so badly that he had to lie down again. It had been a while since the last time he had to deal with a hangover and he was already unused to it. So, Tony went back to sleep, not without getting rid of the _thing_ between his legs before, of course. 

And then, the third time his plan failed was just this morning. Tony went to Bruce’s lab to retrieve something – now, he can’t even remember what it was, nor why he couldn’t have waited; the stress, the lack of sleep, the hunger, hadn’t let him think clearly. When he got inside the lab, Tony felt relief, as nobody was there. It was in his way back to his workshop, in the hallway, when he ran into Bruce. 

To make a long history short, considering that this time he did manage to dodge the Hulk when he tried to scoop him up and ran away from him, the Hulk finally caught him – Tony would have to have some places of the Tower fixed, of course – and brought him to this stupid room – a room that Tony would totally think that looks more like a nursery than a cell, if it wasn’t for the fact that there’s no crib, thank God. After some struggling, the Hulk replaced his jeans and boxers with a _thing_ and his t-shirt with that stupid – not soft, definitely not soft – bodysuit that unsnapped at the crotch. Tony can’t help wondering where Clint gets all that stuff, because he is sure as hell that that _thing_ with childish prints on it and that attire big enough to fit him aren’t things one could go and get in any mall. 

And, after two bottles of milk and being supposedly playing with the Hulk the whole morning, Tony finds himself in his current predicament. He really needs to pee. Now or now. 

_And yet, if you were going to a place where it was probable that Bruce was going to be, you didn’t even ask JARVIS to check his whereabouts first_. That annoying voice speaks up again. 

“Shut up!” Tony yells, gaining a groan of confusion from the Hulk. He didn’t know he wasn’t silencing him, but that inner voice which is getting rather insufferable. 

_Three times. Three times you’ve been diapered before and you didn’t do anything about it. And now here you are, complaining about something you could’ve avoided_. 

“Shut the fuck up!” Tony demands again, kicking his legs as a protest, regretting doing it right away, as the movement makes his abdomen hurt more. 

What that voice is telling him might be right, but, in his defense, in those previous three times the Hulk hadn’t been around for more than a couple of hours. When Tony had woken up – he tended to fall asleep all the times when the Hulk is around – the Hulk had been already gone. Therefore, Tony hadn’t had the need to use the _thing_. 

_Maybe you like this_. 

“No, I fucking don’t!” Tony assures. The Hulk starts to pat his back as he continues bouncing him, noticing his restlessness. Tony groans for the umpteenth time that day. 

And then, Tony feels it. He feels the tiny spurt of pee escape. Arguing with himself made him forget about clamping down to try to hold it. He whimpers after a few minutes as the second spurt escapes. Some tears well up in his eyes when he realizes that one doesn’t stop, on the contrary, it continues until it completely soaks the _thing_. 

Mortification is a word which is a far cry from describing how Tony feels in this moment. One thing had been wearing the _thing_ , but using it was something very different. A little too brusquely, Tony cleans the tears with the back of his hand before they have the chance to shed. Yes, he has just wet a diaper, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to cry about it, he’s _not_ a baby, for fuck’s sake! Although Tony would pretty much like to curl up on a corner until he disappeared. 

Tony doesn’t have much time to pity himself, though, because he can feel the Hulk slipping a finger inside the _thing_ , making him aware of what’s coming next. Something that Tony would dread even more: the Hulk would try to change the fucking _thing_. 

No, that’s not happening. No fucking way. 

The Hulk puts Tony down on the floor, and when he turns around to go and fetch the package of _things_ , Tony stands up and runs toward the door – kind of waddling actually, since the _thing_ is kind of saggy now, but that isn’t the point. He rushes to type the password in the panel and he feels how the blood drains from his face when the word ‘incorrect’ appears on the screen. That was the password! Tony would bet his own life on it! He starts to type it again, and when he is about to type the last number, he hears the Hulk growl as he gets closer to him. So, it’s finishing to type the password, that might be wrong, or run so the Hulk can’t catch him. Tony chooses the second option. 

Soon, Tony is running around the room – he hates how the _thing_ sways and crinkles – throwing at the Hulk everything he can pick up from the floor. The Hulk is hit on the face with Legos, stuffed animals, pillows and toys, but that doesn’t stop him from chasing after Tony. Both of them run into the walls a few times, but being a room built to hold back the Hulk, the walls are very resilient, so, no worries about knocking them down and set an angry Hulk free. No chances to get JARVIS to send this armor and make a hole in them either. 

But Tony’s luck being as bad as it is, eventually makes him step on some Hot Wheels and slip, causing him to fall flat on his face. The Hulk takes advantage of that and, before Tony can stand up again, he sits next to him and turns him around, pinning him against the floor with one hand. Tony struggles, kicking, hitting, swearing and some many other things that he should know by now are futile. Tony starts to panic when the Hulk reaches for the snaps in his crotch and unfastens them. _This is not happening, this is definitely not happening_ , he tells himself. But then, Tony can feel the Hulk’s fingers working on the straps of the _thing_ , and when Tony is sure the Hulk is about to detach them, an alarm goes off. The alarm that lets everyone in the Tower know that Fury just called to announce an Avengers-like emergency. 

Tony can’t be happier to hear that alarm. He’s literally saved by the bell. 

The doors automatically open, and Tony can see how the Hulk looks at the entrance, hesitating, making up his mind whether he should stay or leave. After some minutes, to Tony’s relief, the Hulk decides to leave to deal with whatever the threat was. Even if he is the Hulk, he has come to understand that helping to protect the city, people, the planet itself, is a priority. 

It doesn’t take a lot of time for one of his suits to fly into the room. Tony stands up quickly and takes off that awful attire and the stupid _thing_. Going commando in his armor isn’t his first choice, but is that or wearing another _thing_ , as it’s the only ‘clothing’ available in the room. No way that’s happening. Tony suits up, and he can’t help sighing in relief, for the first time his luck hasn’t been that bad and he has managed to avoid the most humiliating experience in his life, and that’s saying something. 

_Stop lying, you would’ve liked it sooner or later_. 

“I wouldn’t have!” Tony yells at himself.

 _Yes, you would have. Just like the other things_.

“That’s not true, I don’t like anything about this fucking situation! I hate it!” Tony assures, and he feels uneasy when he notices his tone of voice had been kind of unsure. 

_Yeah? Prove it_. 

“I have nothing to prove,” Tony states, putting on his helmet. 

As soon as the helmet is in place, Tony can hear Steve’s voice over the intercom - which helps a bit on quieting his stupid inner voice, though what it's said is stuck in Tony's mind now - explaining all the team what the threat is and where to go. 

Tony takes off, flying to the opposite direction.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, sorry for taking too much time to update this. As I told you before, I got another job, which turned out to be very demanding, and already having to other jobs, I've been more than busy u.u. I even sleep on the way home instead of writing as I usually did.
> 
> Anyway. I wasn't going to update this yet, I wanted this chapter to be longer. but I decided to split this in two, so I could let you know I'm not dropping this, it's just taking more time than planned. Next chapter would be done by this weekend, hopefully. 
> 
> Any feedback is appreciated, as well as any notification about a missspelt, as I really didn't take the time to proofread the chapter more than once.

When Tony opens his eyes, he regrets it immediately. The sunshine coming in through the windows feels like daggers in his eyes. His right hand gropes for a pillow while his left arm is used to protect his eyes from the light. As soon as Tony finds it, he places the pillow over his face quickly. He regrets doing that too, because that fast movement causes such a throbbing pain to his head, that he groans loudly against the soft pillow. 

Never, ever again. Tony's not putting his hands on any bottle of any kind of alcohol ever again for the rest of his life. It's been years since the last time he experienced a hangover this bad. The kind of hangover which makes him sure that an unknown creature used his mouth as a mausoleum, that an elephant danced the tango on his skull, that his stomach somehow crawled and hid itself among his bowels or somewhere else down there, and that all his enemies treated him as a piñata. All of that while he was sleeping during the night. Yes, that kind of hangover which make him believe death would be a bit better. 

All of the sudden, Tony feels a twinge in his untraceable stomach. There’s no doubt about it, he’s going to be sick any minute now. For a millisecond, he debates between standing up and running to the bathroom to prevent himself from emptying the contents of his stomach all over the bed, or staying right where he is to prevent his head from bursting. The second option sounds more painful, but less gross, so Tony chooses that one. A shame the millisecond he used to make up his mind was the only period his stomach was going to give him before it decided by itself to throw out what was inside of it. The only thing Tony has time to do is leaning on the border of the bed and throw up what seems to be nothing but bile on the floor, slightly splashing the sheets. 

"I thought you’d already thrown up everything," Tony hears someone saying, causing him to jump out of bed, since he was supposed to be alone, and fall right where the contents of his stomach are.

"Ugh!!" Tony expresses with disgust, trying to stand up, but he slips as his body refuses to cooperate with him. Every inch of it hurts like hell. 

"Tony?! Are you OK?!" Steve asks, worried, hurrying towards him. 

"What the hell are you doing here? How the hell did you enter? I told JARVIS not to let anyone in! When did you–" Tony trails off when he feels the urge to puke again. 

Steve must have noticed it too, because the next thing he knows is that he's being carried to the bathroom and placed in front of the toilet where he continues to empty his already empty stomach. When he finishes, Tony leans on the toilet, which he would consider a bit disgusting in other circumstances, but now that he's all ran out and his head is killing him, he just wants to lie down. 

"Let's wait some minutes to see if you're really over this time," Steve suggests, placing a wet cloth on the back of his neck, "then you're definitely taking a shower, you stink," he states.

Tony groans as a response to that comment. After taking some minutes to get his breath back, he asks, “how come you're here?"

"Really?" Steve asks, raising an eyebrow. 

"What?" Tony wonders why Steve’s face shows a bit of annoyance, which isn’t something very Steve-like.

"We already had this conversation yesterday," Steve informs. Now Tony is the one who raises an eyebrow. "Don't you remember?" But it's more than obvious that Tony doesn’t. 

Now that Tony stops to think about it, he doesn’t have any memories from the events of last night. No matter how hard he tries, there’s nothing in his mind that gives him a clue about what had happened, not in the slightest. Yes, no alcohol. Never, ever again.

"How did you get in?" Tony asks again, because he just can’t remember and he does want to know.

"I broke a window," Steve confesses, voice annoyed, "don't look so surprised. You were in the room when it happened," he objects before Tony can say anything. 

"What's with you and that thing of breaking your way through?" Tony demands. Really, it wasn’t the first time Steve has done something like that. The glass door of his workshop has already been replaced at least five times. 

"Well, I wouldn't have broken it if you'd opened the door," Steve argues, a frown on his face, "or answer your phone," he adds. 

"Didn't it occur to you that I didn't do either of those things because I wanted to be left alone?" Tony hisses, straightening so fast his head throbs horribly, making him wince. 

Steve glares at him, "I think seven days are more than enough to leave you alone." 

"They're not," Tony indicates, glaring back. 

"Oh, I'm sorry, you needed more days to success in drinking yourself to death?” Steve inquires, and Tony can swear there’s some sarcasm in his tone.

“I wasn’t doing that,” Tony murmurs, not sounding very sure of himself. 

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you emptied all those bottles in the sink before placing them around you.” Yes, that’s sarcasm undoubtedly.

“Well, what I do or don’t do it’s none of your business. The point is why the hell you came in? This is personal property. Unlike the Tower, this isn’t somewhere you can come in whenever you want, this is my house,” he informs, trying to sound authoritarian, but he doubts the picture he must be projecting of himself – leaning on a toilet, vomit waste on his t-shirt and eyes unable to focus – helps him to achieve that.

“Tony, we didn’t know anything about you,” Steve utters, his face showing how hard he’s trying not to let his irritation be seen. He’s failing, though.

“So what? It’s not like this is the first time this happens,” Tony spats. 

“No, but this is the first time it happens after not showing up for a battle,” Steve reasons.

Tony snorts, “big deal.”

“Of course it is!” For some seconds Steve lets his anger take over him, not understanding how Tony can belittle this situation. “You never showed up, we went back to the Tower and you were nowhere around, we tried to get ahold of you and you never picked up your phone, JARVIS was deactivated. We were extremely worried, for all we knew, you could’ve been kidnapped or something worse,” Steve informs, his worry almost tangible, “if we had known since the beginning that you were here drinking like a fish.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to break into my house!” Tony knows he shouldn’t argue, but he can’t help it. He shouldn’t raise his voice either, that just makes his head hurt more. 

“Then you should’ve opened the door!” Steve yells back, “I come here and you keep me outside for hours! I don’t even know for how much time I knocked at the door and rang the bell.”

“I told you I wanted to be left alone!”

“And we _did_ leave you alone, I didn’t come here as soon as we found out where you were. But I needed to know you were OK, that’s why I came. You could’ve opened the door and let me see you were all right at least, that was my only purpose of coming here, I would’ve left after that,” he assures, “but you didn’t even have the decency to come to your door, you got JARVIS to send me away. Maybe you weren’t here either and we’d need to keep looking for you! So, I look through the windows and when I finally find you, you’re passed out on a couch, surrounded by empty bottles of alcohol, drowning with your own vomit! That’s why I had to break in! So, save your comments, because if I hadn’t done that, you wouldn’t be here!” 

That’s all it takes to shut Tony up, because if what Steve just said is true – though Tony knows that’s not the whole reason why Steve came to see him – things got way out of hand, more than he thought they would. And Tony never meant for that to happened. So, he should be grateful Steve got there and not pissed. 

The sound made by running water startles Tony out of his stupor, turning his head around. He sees Steve leaning on the bathtub, one hand on the tap and the other under the flow of water, checking the temperature of it. Tony didn’t even see him when he moved over there. Without saying a word, Steve approaches him and helps him to stand up. Soon, Tony finds himself being stripped off his clothes and leaded to the bathtub. 

He lets himself be bathed, lacking the energy and mood needed to fight against it.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to finish of my job. 
> 
> There are some paragraphs I'm not very happy with, but if I take more time, I'm never going to finish this. 
> 
> Anyway, enjoy and let me know what you think :D
> 
> If there's a spelling or grammar error you spot, let me know :P

"Go the fuck away!" Tony shouts as he storms out of the room, pushing the door hard with the intention of slamming it, but Steve’s face prevents that from happening. 

"Tony!" Steve places a hand on his nose, more out of reflex than from actual pain, "Please, we need to talk, don't walk away like that,” Steve asks, walking behind him. 

"And I told you I don't want to," Tony recalls, walking faster towards to the kitchen.

"I'll leave after you listen to me," Steve promises, trying to catch up with Tony. For someone who still hasn’t gotten over a hangover, Tony’s moving too fast.

"No! You said you just wanted to check if I was OK. You already did, so leave!" Tony storms into the kitchen, but he stops his way to the island when Steve grabs his arm. "Let go of me!" He orders, squirming.

"Please Tony, just listen to me. I don't wanna fight, I took care of you all night!” Steve loosens his grip a bit, not wanting to hurt Tony, but not enough to allow him to set himself free either.

"Oh, so that's what it is about?! Well, thank you very much for that, but if you did that to make me talk to you, I would've preferred to throw up all over myself and drown with my own vomit!" Tony informs, without stopping wriggling. 

"No, I didn't mean it like that. I didn't do it because of that. What I meant was –" 

"I know what you meant!" Tony interrupts him, and he takes advantage of Steve’s mental struggle to put his thoughts in order and gets away from him. Steve is the only person he knows who can manage to be completely pissed and feel guilty at the same time. 

"No, you don’t. You misunderstood it,” Steve assures, his expression showing a mix of annoyance and worry, “I said that because I wanted to point out the I'm not here to fight with you. Quite the opposite," he explains.

"I don't give a shit, I told you I don't want to talk to you and that's it, so get the hell out of here!" Tony demands again, leaning so he could reach the drawers of the island, looking for some ibuprofen. He might be feeling a lot better after taking a long nap, but he still has a headache that’s just not helping his mood. “Where the hell are those pills?!” he asks to himself, slamming a drawer. 

Steve signs deeply, "Tony, you know what the Hulk did, don't you?" he stands up in front of Tony, on the other side of the counter. Tony doesn’t answer, instead, he keeps looking for the pills in all the drawers and cabinets around the kitchen. “Don’t you?” Steve repeats the question when he sees how Tony keeps ignoring him. 

Of course Tony knows. That’s one of the reasons he doesn’t want to have that conversation with Steve. He knows what the Hulk did. At least he knows the part of the story that was shown on the news, and that’s more than enough. 

That day, when Tony took off, he had the great idea to go to his Malibu mansion. Yes, great idea because it had been the worst trip of his life. First, as awesome as his suit was, it hadn’t been built as a first-class compartment, so when he finally arrived to the mansion, every part of his body was sore. Secondly, he almost got a panic attack when the system informed him that he was running out of energy, and there was a moment when Tony thought he was not going to make it. 

On the top of that, he had to listen to JARVIS telling him during all the journey that every single member of the team was trying to get ahold of him. Obviously, Tony didn’t answer the phone, his conscious was already making him feel bad and guilty enough that it was getting very hard not to turn around and go back to the Tower. He didn’t need anyone to help his conscious to convince him to do that. 

As soon as Tony set foot in the mansion, his cell phone was turned off, all the phones around the house were unplugged and even JARVIS was deactivated in the Tower. He wanted to be left alone. Everything had gone too far, to a point where Tony couldn't take it anymore. He had to put an end to it. Things couldn't continue the way they were, if they did, what was going to happen next? Would Clint completely furnish the Hulk’s room to turn it into a nursery? Would the Hulk diaper him right on the street after a battle? No fucking thanks! This was going to stop, even if that meant Tony had to distance himself from the team. 

With that resolution in mind, Tony went to bed that night. A restless night. The next morning, he woke up with the intention to keep that resolution, and Tony’s determination would’ve never started to falter if he hadn’t seen the news. 

While he was having his morning coffee, Tony got JARVIS to turn on TV just to have some noise in the room. The brunette from the news was telling the audience about the last fight of the Avengers. It wouldn’t have drawn Tony’s attention if the anchorwoman hadn’t begun to talk about the Hulk – the Avengers were getting bad press lately, so everybody in the team tried to turn deaf ear to all news about them. Tony turned the volume up while he sat down on a couch, his mouth half-open in astonishment, the cup in his hand not being important anymore, causing its content to spill on the floor. If Tony hadn’t known better, he would have sworn he was watching a remake of Godzilla. 

Video clips, which seemed to have been recorded by reporters as well as pedestrians, were shown on the screen, giving Tony a clear view of how the city looked after the Hulk had decided to go for a run towards the Tower. Some zones had been already evacuated because of the battle, but the nearest areas of the Tower had been busy, and people had run terrorized after the sudden appearance of a Hulk who couldn’t have cared less about the buildings, cars or people that crossed his path. The Hulk had entered the Tower and dropped out of sight for many minutes, in which Tony could spot Steve, Clint and Thor getting out of a ship and going inside the Tower too. 

The clip was changed again, and on the next one that was shown, the Hulk could be seen on the top of the Tower, howling outrageously, looking everywhere around him. At least a dozen of ships and helicopters appeared out of nowhere and started to shoot at him, making him growl more. Trying to get rid of his attackers, the Hulk had smashed half of them – Tony could see how the soldiers had to parachute themselves – but more kept arriving and the Hulk decided to run away from them, jumping from building to building, destroying everything in his path. 

More video clips, all of them showing the same sequence of events from different angles and perspectives, were shown. The news reporter ended the bulletin saying the Hulk had been captured one hour later – though his whereabouts after that were unknown – and, even if there hadn’t been any casualties, some people had been injured. That fact didn’t make Tony feel any better, especially since the last clip shown on TV had been one where the Hulk had been sitting down on the roof of a building, taking all the shoots as if nothing didn’t matter anymore. Tony could swear the Hulk’s expression was one of sadness and disappointment, though he hadn’t been sure as the image changed right away. 

It had been his fault. Everything had been his fault. Half of the city was under reconstruction, including his own Tower, and the Hulk, well, Tony didn’t even know what had happened to him. The news didn’t say anything about that specific detail – of course SHIELD would try to hide as much information on the matter as possible – they just repeated the same footage and say the same things over and over again. And there was no way Tony could find out without having to get in contact with the team, which he didn’t want to do. 

If Tony had had the intention of not thinking about that, it wouldn’t have been possible, as that had been the only story everybody talked about for the next days. The Internet was full of more video clips, and it became a trending topic in the blink of an eye. That put Tony on the edge. The guilt was the thing that put the idea of drinking almost his entire storage of alcohol in his mind, reality was something he didn’t want to deal with in that moment. 

“He went crazy when he didn’t see you, we couldn’t stop him,” Steve continues, “I mean, it was obvious we weren’t going to be able to reason with him, but we hoped that he calmed down as soon as he saw you. The thing is that… you never showed up,” he says, his tone of voice sounding disappointed to Tony’s ears.

“What are you trying to say? That this is all my fault?!,” Tony asks angrily, he already knows it’s his fault, but that doesn’t mean he wants another person to rub his nose in it. 

“No! Stop that! Stop putting words in my mouth!” Steve accuses as he throws his hands up in the air as a sight of exasperation, “I’m not blaming you, no one is, I promise. But you have to go back Tony,” he begs. 

And that, that is what Tony was dreading to here. Because he knows he has to go back, and he doesn’t want to. He knows he has to go back if he wants to prevent the Hulk from destroying all the city, trying to find him. If he wants to keep the Hulk out of trouble.

“Look, I know you don’t want to,” Steve proceeds as the only thing Tony does is gape at him, “but if you don’t do it, Bruce is going to be in trouble.”

“What do you mean?” Tony asks, not really wanting to know the answer. 

“Fury managed to keep the Hulk from being taken away. After what happened, his reputation worsened, and everybody is afraid of him again,” Steve explains, his eyes looking towards Tony, but not really seeing him, “but even if Fury backed the Hulk, he was livid. He didn’t know all the details, and I think he didn’t even care at the moment, he just wanted to avoid more problems and bad press, and the only solution he could think of was locking Bruce away.”

“What?! And you let him do that?!” Tony spats, guilt going to the surface again. He knew Bruce wasn’t going to get it easy after what happened, but not knowing all the details of the aftermath had somehow helped him to deal with his remorse. 

For some seconds Steve’s anger arises again, “of course we didn’t! We’d never allow Fury to do such a thing! It was hard, but we convinced him not to. The problem is that we couldn’t convince Bruce. He agreed with Fury, he wanted to be locked away. We didn’t allow him to do it either,” he assures before Tony can object about it, “but he’s been sedated ever since.” 

Tony would like Steve to shut up, because the more he talks, the worse he feels. "You must be fucking kidding. Bruce can't be knocked down by any sedative. It has to be something really strong. And you're telling me he's been like that for many days? A sedative that strong can have bad consequences if the person is under-sedation for long periods of time! What if Bruce is no able to come to his senses anymore and the Hulk takes over?!” The mere thought of that makes Tony shiver a bit. 

"I know!" Steve acknowledges, the movement of his hands showing hoe distressed he’s feeling. 

"Then why the fuck did you allow this?!" Tony emphasizes his question by slamming his fist on the counter. How was it possible that Steve allowed something like that?

Steve takes some seconds to answer, clearly trying to control his anger too. Tony knows he wants to yell at him, but he won’t do it, afraid that might send Tony away again. "Because Bruce begged me to let him do it," he replies, folding his arms over his chest, more out of not knowing what to do with them anymore, than as a sign of defense.

"Well, then you should’ve convinced him not to!" Tony scolds, even if he knows he should be mad at himself, not at Steve. Bruce’s dilemma is because of him, not Steve. 

"I tried, believe me, I did try. But you should’ve seen him, he was devastated after he found out what happened. He was afraid he might have hulked out again and killed somebody this time. You know how he gets whenever the Hulk does something bad, he blames himself. Obviously I tried to persuade him into not doing it, but he didn’t listen to reason." Tony looks away, his mind creating a perfect picture of a devastated Bruce, and it’s too much to bear. “Look Tony, I know I waited too much to apologized, but, for what it's worth, I'm really really sorry," Steve says, real regret on his face, making Tony look at him again, confused. Why was Steve apologizing? None of this was his fault. 

"About what?" Tony asks, wanting to know what's going on in Steve's mind.

"For letting things reach this point. I mean, I should've done something since this started," Steve explains, Tony doesn’t know what to say. Sure, Steve was kind of an ass for waiting too much time to deal with Clint, but besides that, what could he have done? It wasn't like he could have told the Hulk to stop. 

"What could you have done?" Tony asks.

"I don't know, something, anything! I'm the Captain! All of you are my responsibility. When things started to get worse, at least I should've tried to do something.” Steve sits down on the nearest stool, leaning his elbows against the counter, holding his head in his hands. 

Tony raises an eyebrow. _Do_ is not the same as _try_ to do. "Try?" 

"Yes. I mean, I–”, Steve trails off, looking at Tony with an unreadable expression on his face, as if he didn’t want to answer to that question. “Jeez, Tony, you weren't exactly against it.”

"What?!" Tony spats.

"You complained and everything, but I got the feeling you didn’t really hate it," Steve implies slowly. Tony can notice how Steve analyses him to try to figure out what’s going on in his head. 

It’s amazing how fast Tony can go from feeling terrible for all the trouble he has caused, to be furious for what Steve’s implying. "What the fuck do you mean?!” he shouts. 

"Well, you talk too much, you say a lot of things, and sometimes, or most of the times, those things you say are the opposite of what you really think or want. I got the feeling this time was one of those," Steve asserts as he raises his hands and leaves them floating in the air in front of him, showing Tony he wasn’t looking for a fight.

Tony can feel how his face turns red, anger or embarrassment, he’s not sure why. He’s angry because he just found out that the second reason of his escape hadn’t gone unnoticed by Steve. He’s embarrassed because of all the implications there are thanks to the fact that Steve knows about it. 

He hadn’t been against it. No completely.

The whole situation had been annoying. The spankings had been painful. The diapers had been humiliating. The pacifiers and bottles had been aggravating. And even like that, Tony couldn’t say he hated it. Not really. 

No matter how much Tony tried, all those bad things didn’t make the whole experience something bad, as he wished. In Tony’s head, after too much thinking, everything came down to one thing: being taken care of. Someone had bothered to look after him just for the sake of it, with no intention of getting something out of it. With no intention of doing any harm. 

Tony had felt protected and loved, and those feelings couldn’t be considered bad no matter how much he tried. And that was something that disturbed Tony a lot. On one hand Tony was glad he had done what he did, getting away from the Hulk and putting a stop to the babying thing. On the other hand, he wanted to go back and settle things, but far back in his mind, he also wanted to go back due to the fact that he missed the attention. He missed the Hulk. He missed that treatment.

Yes, what had happened with the Hulk had made Tony feel awfully guilty. But what really made him drink all that alcohol was _that_ , the awful realization of what Steve just said. 

When he started to realized what was really going on in his head, he literally freaked out, and it is well know that Tony Stark doesn’t make good decisions when his head is a mess. 

After a couple of days spent there in the mansion, Tony found himself struggling between wanting to do two things: staying right there and going back to the Tower. But wanting to go back just because he was craving for freaking cuddles wasn’t something Tony couldn’t accept. There must have been something wrong with him, how could he like something like that? How could he want to go back knowing in advance how things were going to be once he was in front of the Hulk again? 

Yes, diapers, bottles and pacifiers aside, Tony couldn’t deny he wanted to keep the relationship he had with the Hulk. Although it was a whole package deal, and Tony was well aware of that. 

“It’s not true,” Tony says, trying to convince himself more than Steve. “What the fuck is wrong with you? How could you think such a think?” he demands, but he doubts he’s sounding convincing, since Steve looks at him with a look that says he’s not really buying it, but he’s not going to say anything on the matter to avoid upsetting Tony more than he already is.

“Again, I’m sorry,” Steve apologizes one more time. “I told you, I know I should’ve done something, but what’s done is done. Now the important thing is fixing this mess. You have to go back Tony, we can’t let Bruce that way, we can’t risk having another incident like the last one,” he reasons. 

“Go back? Are you out of you mind? You know exactly what’s gonna happen if I do that! You’re gonna keep ignoring the situation, Clint’s gonna keep messing with me, and the Hulk’s gonna keep treating me like I’m his fucking baby!! No fuking way I’m gonna allow that!!” Tony shouts, slamming his fist on the counter one more time.

“I promise I already dealt with Clint. I was very clear with him and even threatened him before I came here,” Steve assures, standing up and walking closer to Tony. 

Tony glares at Steve, and steps back a bit when Steve stands too close to him, “yeah, because that has worked before.”

“Please Tony,” Steve begs. 

“No,” Tony denies, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“Please, let’s go back,” 

“No,” Tony keeps denying. 

“Look, give me a week, I promise I’ll figure something out in one week, if not, you can leave again. I’ll even help you to leave,” Steve promises. 

“What can you possibly do in a week?” Tony utters. 

“I don’t know yet, but I’ll come up with something,” Steve says with determination. 

Tony turns around and starts to walk away. “There’s nothing you can do,” he asserts before he leaves the kitchen. 

Steve doesn’t say anything else, nor he follows him this time. There’s no need to do so, since Steve knows that Tony has already made up his mind. 

Tony knew what he was going to end up doing since the first day he stepped foot in his mansion.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I can’t believe I managed to write this chapter in less than a week. Procrastinating work has its perks (I’m going to regret it later, but, what the hell XD).
> 
> I got some comments on the last chapter that took me by surprise. OK, I might not have tagged the story properly, but I thought I’ve already dealt with that. I mean, I did change the tags, and according to me, they’re OK now. If you still think they’re not, please let me know.
> 
> I always consider Tony as a person who has a hard time figuring out what he wants. He talks too much, he brags too much, he does plenty of things he’s apparently proud of, he looks so sure of himslef, but deep down, I think he’s still dealing with some internal demons and trying to discover himself. In this story, what a meant to describe (and maybe I didn’t do it quite correctly) was that, he did like age play, but he was having a hard time accepting it and understanding it, maybe because things didn’t happen at his pace, but the Hulk’s. And well, it was hard from him too because it was something he didn't know, something a bit odd as well. I think if it had been something sexual, it would've been easier for him to accept, but the thing is that is wasn't.
> 
> And yes, the team’s way of acting might not have been the best one, but, unfortunately, we’ve seen they can be a little bit unsupportive sometimes. But there's also the fact that, at the very beginning, Tony did brag about the Hulk treating him differently, and he even used that to get away with some things, so, it could be said the team kind of got confusing pieces of information too. Not defending them, though. Just trying to put my own arguments in order.
> 
> So, I don’t know if I explained myself well, hopefully I did. 
> 
> Anyway, I don’t really mind those comments. You’re free to speak your mind. Actually, it’s kind of helpful to know or see things from a different perspective. (And I swear I’m not being sarcastic or anything like that).
> 
> Thanks to those people who “defended” the story. I really appreciate it.  
> I guess that everything I wanted to say. 
> 
> I’m two chapters away from finishing this, hopefully I’ll manage to write the next chapter the next week, but I won’t promise anything. 
> 
> Enjoy! :)

It's comfortable. The pile of sheets and blankets he's lying on are very comfortable. So comfortable, Tony doesn’t want to leave dreamland yet. A shame the sun shining through the window hits his face and wakes him up. He groans in displeasure and turns his back to the window, hugging tighter the closest pillow his hand comes across. Tony has no doubt that he has been sleeping for at least 7 hours – more than he's used to – but he's still too sleepy to try to open his eyes and keep them that way. It's a bit amazing how easily he got used to sleeping during the whole night and for so many hours in so little time. 

Before Tony could go back to sleep, he hears footsteps approaching him. Two hands slide under his armpits, and seconds later he’s being scooped up. He’s about to whine because of the change of position, when the Hulk pulls him against his chest and starts rubbing his back, soothing away any kind of discomfort Tony might have begun to feel. Tony melts into the embrace and curls into the Hulk without hesitating, wanting to warm up. Even if JARVIS controls the temperature of the Tower, Tony has felt a bit cold in the mornings. Freaking Clint, if he was going to get some kids clothing, he may well have gotten some pajamas – even if they had been footed pajamas, Tony wouldn’t have cared, not when the alternative was wearing those freaking onesies that left his legs bare and vulnerable to the now cool mornings. 

Having already dozed off, Tony doesn’t stop himself from whining this time when the Hulk pushes him away from his cozy chest and places him on the floor. Tony tries to get away right away, knowing what’s coming next, but the Hulk keeps him easily in place with one hand, while the other is used to unsnap the crotch of the onesie. It’s not that Tony doesn’t want the Hulk to remove the soiled diaper – quite the opposite actually, since Tony has discovered how uncomfortable a wet diaper can be after some time – it’s just that he’s already feeling a bit cold, and it’s going to get colder when the cool morning air hits his naked inner thighs and the baby wipes make contact with his damp skin to clean it, and he just doesn’t want that happen. The Hulks tries to soothe him by caressing his stomach with his thumb. It works.

The process doesn’t take long, and the discomfort is already forgotten when Tony is placed against the Hulk’s chest again. Tony closes his eyes one more time as he feels the Hulk starts to walk, lulled by the movement. He doesn’t need to see the way they’re going to know they’re heading to the kitchen, where the Hulk would fetch a bottle and feed him with some banana flavored milk that Tony starts to like more than he would ever let himself admit. 

Six days. Tony’s been back in the Tower for six days. Some hours after his argument with Steve, both of them flew back there in one of his private jets, which were available for him all the time. It took him some more hours to make up his mind and go down the Hulk’s room, who made an appearance as soon as Tony stood in front of Bruce, even if this one was still under sedation. 

What happened next is still a bit fuzzy in Tony’s mind. Everything was so fast as the Hulk didn’t exactly know what to do. First, Tony found himself being hugged in a slightly suffocating way. Next, his butt was being the target of the Hulk’s smacks while he was over his knee. And then, the Hulk pushed him away from him, howling until Tony turned around and took some steps forward, scooping him up before he walked out the door, repeating the whole round again for about three or four times. By the fifth – or sixth, he’s not sure – time that Tony was in the Hulk’s arms, the latter didn’t let go of him anymore. 

For three days, the only times Tony left the Hulk’s arms were when he needed a diaper change or a bath. Otherwise, he was always against his chest or sitting on his lap. The farthest the Hulk let him be was sitting down next to him on the floor, an arm always kept protectively around his waist. It was like the Hulk was afraid that, if he let go of Tony for more than two seconds, he would go away one more time. 

It might be believed that Tony would have been sick or frustrated because of that, but shockingly, he wasn't. Whenever he was about to throw a fit or something, the guilt he had experienced when he found out what had happened after he left the Tower, almost two weeks ago, came back to the surface, making him count to ten to cool himself down, feeling he kind of owed this to the Hulk. 

Besides, to Tony's astonishment, things hadn’t been that bad this time. Once he stopped fighting against it, Tony started to realize how relaxing the experience could actually be. 

After the terrible week he had spent in his mansion – where the only thought he’d had in his mind had been remorse, the only thing in his stomach had been coffee and alcohol, and the only rest he’d had had been three or four hours of sleep every once in a while – three meals a day, plenty hours of sleep and frequent attention was something Tony kind of needed. Yes, the Hulk insisted on feeding him just with healthy food (courtesy of Steve, with no doubt whatsoever) and put him to bed very early, but Tony had to admit that carrying a healthy lifestyle had its perks. He didn’t feel run down and grumpy as he sometimes felt after a sleepless night spent in his workshop, obsessed with a project. 

And being every single minute with the Hulk didn’t bother Tony as much as one would have thought, as spending time with the Big Guy turned out to be sort of fun. Sometimes they settled in front of the TV to watch movies. Disney and Pixar movies of course, but even if they were animated movies meant for kids, Tony realized they were capable of attracting adults’ attention as well. Tony could have sworn that, when they were watching Finding Nemo, the vibration he had felt while sitting on his lap were caused by the Hulk’s laughter. He wasn’t sure though, as the sound of said laughter had been more like an angerless groan. 

Then, there was play time. Playing with the Hulk had been a very entertaining and funny disaster. Now that Tony had time to check all the toys that there were in the room, he had to be grateful to Clint for not having gotten just stuffed animals. There were a bunch of other toys interesting enough to keep Tony entertained for a while. 

Construction toys. Clint had bought plenty of construction toys. Tony liked building things. In those six days, he had built a lot of different and amazing things – it had even help to take his mind off all the things he could have been doing in his workshop. The only bad thing was that, whenever the Hulk took any of his creations, too curious to keep his hands away, his movements were too brusque and his hands were too big, that he ended up destroying everything unintentionally. Tony pouted when that happened – nor that he would ever admit it – which caused the Hulk to get mortified, and he tried to fix whatever he destroyed to erase the moue from Tony’s face. Of course the results weren’t good, and the pieces ended up slipped in two or three more parts. That upset Tony more, as all the toys that could keep him busy were reducing in quantity very quickly. The Hulk’s mortified and guilty expression was priceless though. Tony even got a piggyback ride once when the Hulk ran out of ideas of how to reward him for stepping on his totally awesome Ferris wheel made out of Tinkertoys. 

Race tracks were other toys that Tony enjoyed. They were quite long and he loved to modify them to make the cars go faster. It took Tony by surprised when he found out the Hulk was a bad loser. Tony was to shocked to do anything but chuckle when he spotted the Hulk placing a finger in front of his car to gain some advantage and win. Tony didn’t know the Hulk could snort happily, mocking him for losing. He didn’t know the Hulk could look devastated either, after Tony refused to continue playing, tired of not being able to win. 

And finally, there was a ball. When the Hulk let Tony get away a bit from him, he encouraged him to play with a ball. At the beginning Tony refused because he didn’t like how the diaper made him waddle, but when he saw how difficult it was for the Hulk to catch a ball too small for his huge hands, he started to enjoy the game. He couldn’t help laughing when the Hulk lost his balance trying to catch the ball, which had rolled between his legs, and ended up falling on it, bursting it. The Hulk hadn’t like the mocking, and he leaped on Tony, who found himself being tickled until he had been out of breath and needing a diaper change. 

Although the best thing had been the bedtime routine. Tony adored how the Hulk sat down in front of the windows, giving him a perfect view of the lively nightlife of New York, while he tenderly held him in his arms, swaying side to side, lulling him to sleep. It wasn’t a big deal really, but that simple routine managed to keep the nightmares at bay, and that meant a lot to Tony. 

Without a doubt, Tony still wasn’t keen on diapers, pacifiers and bottles, but those items were pushed somehow into the background by all the other things. 

A few minutes later, Tony is brought out of his thoughts when the Hulk stops walking. They must have reached the kitchen. Tony opens his eyes expecting to see Steve there – he’s been wanting to talk to him, but for some reason he hasn’t bumped into him lately. Steve’s nowhere to be seen, but he does spot Clint. Tony can't help grinning widely as Clint rushes out of the kitchen, not without glaring at him before. It’s not the first time Tony sees the archer behaving like that, after all, Clint has been avoiding them for the last couple of days. It’s understandable, after getting a spanking from the Hulk, anybody else would do the same. 

Yes, the Hulk spanked Clint. And Tony can assure it wasn’t some sort of revenge or anything like that. It actually happened because of a misunderstanding.

By the fifth day, the Hulk and Tony ran into several boxes when they got into the communal living room. Getting things delivered at the Tower wasn’t something that uncommon. With all the responsibilities they all had, especially Tony, getting things on the Internet was more convenient than going shopping at malls. JARVIS had said he didn’t know where the boxes came from, and after scanning them to check there wasn’t anything dangerous inside – with all the enemies they had, they had to be very careful – Steve took the boxes there.

Tony didn't remember buying anything, Thor and Natasha rarely bought things, Clint wasn’t back from a mission yet so they couldn’t ask him, and Steve told him he had ordered some painting supplies, but he doubted those big boxes were them. The label didn't say anything about who it was for either. Steve opened one of the boxes very carefully, still thinking it may be something from one of their many enemies, but it wasn't. Steve hold some childish-printed adult-size diapers in one hand and some adult-size onesies in the other, an unreadable expression on his face. 

In that precise moment, Clint walked inside the living room, clothes dirty, face sweaty and looking exhausted. He made a beeline to the couch, plopping on it. He didn’t really pay attention to his surroundings and looked confused when he realized Tony and Steve were staring at him. When he saw the boxes, the expression on his face gave him away. 

Tony went livid and, before the Hulk could grab him, he jumped on Clint. Steve had said he had already dealt with him! What a freaking liar! And what a nerve Clint had to keep his stupid shenanigans. Punches were delivered and, obviously, Clint defended himself. For a split second Clint managed to overpower Tony. He closed his eyes and placed his arms in front of him to protect himself from the blow Clint was about to throw, but instead of feeling a fist on his cheek he felt a big hand pulling him away. Still angry, Tony tried to go closer Clint again, but he stopped dead when he saw that Clint was over the Hulk’s knee, being spanked. 

Later Tony found out Clint had bought those things way before promising Steve to stop his pranks, and he had totally forgotten about them when all the Hulk’s fiasco happened. Tony believed him, but even like that, he couldn't feel a bit sorry for Clint as this situation had gotten too far thanks to him too. Moreover, it was a relief not having him around, wondering if he was going to dare to do something else to get even for the undeserved spanking. Well, not underserved according to Tony, let’s say that for him, things were even now. 

The Hulk walks towards the island in the kitchen and grabs a bottle that was lying there in the counter. Then, he moves Tony until is securely supported by his left arm, and with his right one he places the bottle in front of Tony's face, pressing the nipple against his lips. Tony latches on it immediately, too hungry to think about how weird this might be. 

One day. One more day is what’s left from the lapse of time that Steve had asked him to figure out a way out of this, otherwise Steve himself would help him to go away again. Tony hasn't really had the chance to talk to Steve about it, so he had no idea if he had a solution for this or not yet. But Steve was a man of his word and Tony trusts he might already have come up with something.

Even so, Tony can’t help feeling pretty anxious. Although he can’t understand why. He doesn’t know if this uneasy feeling is caused because he's one step away from being finally free from this, or because he has to be freed from this.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next-to-last! 
> 
> I can't believe I made it this far, so I'm happy. One more, and it's over. 
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy it. And, as usual, if you spot any mistakes, please let mw know :)

Tony has no idea what to do. He doesn’t know whether to stay a bit more, go and ride the Quinjet with the others or fly back to the Tower by himself. He knows he has to do something, he might have been standing there a bit too long now, but he just can’t make himself move a finger. 

Two hours ago the alarm to assemble went off. One hour ago the Avengers were fighting against the cutest deadly rabbits Tony had ever seen – Loki sure had a weird sense of humor, and Clint was going to get a punch on the face for warning Tony not to confuse them with one of his stuffed animals. Fifteen minutes ago Thor killed the last fluffy enemy and went after Loki to Asgard. Ten minutes ago the Hulk stood in front of Tony and stayed there, four feet away. Tony was expecting to be scooped up as usual, but instead of that, Bruce made an appearance. 

Both men stared at each other, unsaid questions floating in the air, which none of them had the answer for. What the hell happened? It had been a while since the last time Bruce was able to be in front of Tony without hulking out. Jeez, Tony even thought he would never see Bruce again. 

Five minutes ago, Bruce walked away, suddenly realizing he was standing half-naked in the middle of the street – it had also been awhile since the last time he transformed back to himself right after a battle. Tony stayed right there. 

A lot of thoughts cross his mind, but Tony is sure that the one which is causing him this kind of shock is the same one he has been pushing away for some time now: the Hulk lost all interest in him. 

\- - - - -

“I don’t know what to do,” Steve had confessed on the seventh day, “I’ve been thinking about what can be done, but all the scenarios have something that could turn out terribly wrong,” he had explained, rubbing the back of his neck. “I mean, with what happened the last time, we can’t afford another disaster like that one.”

“I don’t fucking care, you told me you needed seven days, and today is the seventh,” Tony had accused, trying not to speak too loud, afraid Bruce hadn’t been far away enough, and hulk out when hearing him.

“I know! And I swear I’m on it. I talked to Bruce yesterday about what would be the best thing to do. He said he wants to leave the Tower for a while, go back to his thing of helping people around the world,” Steve had informed.

Tony had shuddered slightly with that piece of information. “What?” Tony had asked, hating how his voice had trembled when he had done so. He didn’t want Bruce to leave. 

“Don’t worry,” Steve had said, surely Tony’s apprehensive reaction hadn’t gone unnoticed. “I talked him out of it. It might not be such a bad idea, but can you imagine what would happen if he’s miles away and the Hulk shows up and starts looking for you?” Steve had asked, an alarmed expression on his face, “I mean, last time he didn’t know where you were, that’s why he stopped. But this time, he would think you’re in the Tower and he would go all the way back to here,” Steve had reason, smiling slightly upon perceiving Tony releasing the air he hadn’t even known he had been holding. 

“So, then what?” Tony had exclaimed, not sounding as angry as he had intended to. 

Steve had sighed deeply, and for some minutes he had just stared at Tony. “Give me some more days,” he had finally said, his body tensing up as if he had been preparing himself for Tony’s not so calm reaction. 

“What?! No, no, no! I already stayed here for too long, this isn’t what we’d agreed on. You told me that if you didn’t figure out what to do, you’d help me to get out of here!” Tony had reminded him, shouting silently. How had he dared to ask him for more time? Tony had thought that Captain America was a man of his word!

After some more quiet yelling, Steve had ended up convincing him anyway. Or that had been what Tony had made himself believe. Because, under no circumstance  
Tony could have felt a bit content to have had an excuse to stay. 

He definitely hadn’t felt a bit relieved.

\- - - - -

So, seven days became nine, then thirteen, and before Tony could realize it, he had been there for twenty-three days. Yes, twenty-three days. If seven days hadn’t pushed Tony to the edge, twenty-three days surely had. Well, actually, they would have if it hadn’t been for the fact that the Hulk started to trust him more, which granted him more freedom and the possibility of not having to be with the Hulk every single minute. Or that had been the conclusion Tony had come to back then. 

It started on the fifth day. After arguing with Steve for not keeping his word, Tony had wondered when Steve had talked to Bruce if the Hulk had supposedly been with him all the time. Steve had told him he had run into Bruce when he had gone to check up on them during the night. The same happened the next day, and the next one, and all the following ones after that one. Both of them had been surprised that the Hulk had let Bruce taken over, but since the matter of figuring out this mess once and for all had been more important than understanding why Bruce was there, they hadn’t mulled over about it. 

So, the Hulk changed back when Tony was sleeping. Not a big deal, really, as nothing else changed, the Hulk still was the first person who Tony saw when he opened his eyes in the morning. He didn’t even know that had been happening until later. 

However, on the ninth day, some things began to happen which Tony did notice. Little things that might have made him feel relieved right then, but there was no doubt now they were signs of what eventually would happen. 

The Hulk started to distance himself little by little. 

During playtime, after some time, Tony began to find himself playing by himself. Usually, the Hulk would be all over him, curious about what he was doing with the toys, encouraging him to play something in particular, trying to figure out if there was a way he could make Tony’s experience more enjoyable. The Hulk even took advantage of his temporary distraction and constantly checked if his diaper needed to be change – something Tony didn’t fancy, but it was better than the alternative of having to asked for a change or trying to run to the bathroom, which only earned him a couple of spanks. One moment the Hulk would be sitting next to him, reaching for whatever Tony had built, and the next one, he would be some feet away. 

Tony didn't give it too much importance, sure that the Hulk did that to avoid making him angry since he usually ended up destroying something. 

Then, the same started to happen in lunch time. On the fourteenth day, the Hulk stopped sitting him on his lap and feeding him. He would stay there with him and check if he actually finished whatever was in his plate that day, but there were neither spoons pretending to be airplanes, nor sudden tickles to make him open his mouth. And towards the end, there were no bottles after lunch either. Tony didn't let himself think absolutely anything about the matter. He told himself this change of events was better because, in this way, he didn't finish with his face stained with food – the Hulk sometimes missed and Tony stubbornly denied that him moving so much had something to do with that.

So, things continued like that, bit by bit the Hulk stopped being a constant figure in his daily life, until Tony was even allowed to go back being an adult half of the day. He even got the chance to go and get some things done in his workshop. As long as he avoided walking into Bruce during the day – who kept hulking out just by looking at him – Tony was free to do as he wished, and he liked it. 

It was until the Hulk didn't showed for bedtime on day twenty, that Tony felt his absence. He did not like how uneasy that made him feel. 

\- - - - 

When the alarm went off, Tony felt a weird kind if excitement. Fighting always filled him with adrenaline. Although, this time, that wasn’t what caused that reaction on him, but something entirely different. Something he'd been struggling with and couldn't bring himself to come to terms with just yet. 

Two weeks. It had been two weeks since he had last interacted with the Hulk. The latter hadn't gone to look for him, and Tony was more than sure that Bruce was avoiding him as Tony was avoiding Bruce. After all that had happened, after all the troubles, anger, frustration, and embarrassment that this situation had caused, Tony was supposed to be glad because, apparently, it was over. Except he wasn’t.  
Several times, Tony found himself experiencing a strong urge to go and look for the Hulk. Especially when feeling stressed. He tried to ignore that impulse, and blamed it on the stress itself, which didn’t let him think straight. 

After long hours in his workshop, when his stomach reminded him noisily that it had been a long time since his last meal, Tony was tempted once more to go and find the Hulk so he could feed him, avoiding that way the effort of going to the kitchen and making something by himself, which surely was going to be a poor and not so healthy option. Again, the hunger was blamed for it. 

Nothing whatsoever could be compared with how much Tony needed the Hulk at night. He was suddenly used to sleep at night every day. No matter how much he tried, how much coffee he drank, how concentrated and obsessed he got with one project, Tony just couldn’t keep his eyes open. In spite of that, of being pretty sleepy, he couldn’t fall sleep. He just kept tossing and turning in bed, unable to get to sleep. And when he finally did, a nightmare woke him up, leaving him too disturbed to continue his journey through dreamland, and too tired to being able to actually work on something.

What was wrong with him? Giving it a lot of thought and allowing himself to go to places he normally wouldn’t go, trying to understand what was going on, Tony came to the horrible realization that he might miss the Hulk. He couldn’t shake the feeling it was kind of fuck up, though. What if it was just some sort of Stockholm Syndrome? If it was, these urges would eventually vanish, and everything would be as it was before. 

But the doubt was there, stuck in his mind, and Tony couldn’t help wondering what would happen if he allowed himself meet with the Hulk one more time. If it would help him to get the kind of closure he needed to leave all this behind once and for all. Help him to realize he was just missing the Hulk as one usually missed something out of pure habit. Although that didn’t mean Tony was going to go running looking for Bruce. He couldn’t let himself do that. 

Bumping into him after a battle, well, that was a different history. That was something Tony could deal with. Something that wouldn’t make his brain burst with remorse. 

\- - - - -

Tony follows Bruce with his eyes until he is too far to be seen. A lot of scenarios had crossed his mind when he pictured this rendezvous, including the Hulk starting to be all over him one more time, scooping him up as usual, and, hopefully, Tony realizing it had been a huge mistake and the missing thing turned out to be just an illusion. 

Bruce walking away was never one of those scenarios. 

Forcing himself to move, Tony takes off as soon as he sees Steve walking over him. He doesn't feel like talking to anyone, especially since that someone is going to scold him as he usually does for not following orders during battle. His mind barely registers the way to the Tower, too overflown with lots of thoughts, but not really thinking about anything. 

When his mind begins to be aware of his surroundings again, Tony isn't surprised in the slightest to find himself sitting in the Hulk’s ‘room’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr](http://arkiem65.tumblr.com/)


End file.
